e queen, who
showed herself very ungrateful, for she often thereafter taunted him
with this ride and laughed at the gibes the others lavished upon him.
Twice Guinevere drove Launcelot mad with these taunts, and frequently
she heartlessly sent him off on dangerous errands.

Launcelot, however, so surpassed all the knights in courage and daring
that he won all the prizes in the tournaments. A brilliant series of
these entertainments was given by the king, who, having found twelve
large diamonds in the crown of a dead king, offered one of them as
prize on each occasion. Launcelot, having secured all but the last,
decided to attend the last tournament in disguise, after carefully
informing king and queen he would not take part in the game.

Pausing at the Castle of Astolat, he borrowed a blank shield, and left
his own in the care of Elaine, daughter of his host, who, although he
had not shown her any attention, had fallen deeply in love with him.
As further disguise, Launcelot also wore the favor Elaine timidly
offered, and visited the tournament escorted by her brother. Once more
Launcelot bore down all rivals, but he was so sorely wounded in the
last encounter that he rode off without taking the prize. Elaine's
brother, following him, conveyed him to a hermit's, where some poets
claim Elaine nursed him back to health. Although there are two Elaines
in Launcelot's life, i.e., the daughter of Pelles (whom he is tricked
into marrying and who bears him Galahad) and the "lily maid of
Astolat,"--some of the later writers fancied there was only the
latter. According to some accounts Launcelot lived happily with the
first Elaine in the castle he had conquered,--Joyous Garde,--until
Queen Guinevere, consumed by jealousy, summoned them both to court.
There she kept them apart, and so persecuted poor Elaine that she
crept off to a convent, where she died, after bringing Galahad into
the world and after predicting he would achieve the Holy Grail.

The other Elaine,--as Tennyson so beautifully relates, a dying of
unrequited love, bade her father and brothers send her corpse down the
river in charge of a dumb boatman. Everybody knows of the arrival of
the funeral barge at court, of the reading of the letter in Elaine's
dead hand, and of Launcelot's sorrow over the suffering he had
unwittingly caused.

Launcelot and Guinevere are not the only examples in the Arthurian
Cycle of the love of a queen for her husband's friend, and of his