"and she lay as though she had smiled." Her letter is read. "Ye
might have showed her," said the Queen, "some courtesy and gentleness
that might have preserved her life;" and so the two are reconciled.

Such, in brief, is the tender old tale of true love, with the shining
courtesy of Lavaine and the father of the maid, who speak no word of
anger against Lancelot. "For since first I saw my lord, Sir
Lancelot," says Lavaine, "I could never depart from him, nor nought I
will, if I may follow him: she doth as I do." To the simple and
moving story Tennyson adds, by way of ornament, the diamonds, the
prize of the tourney, and the manner of their finding:-


"For Arthur, long before they crown'd him King,
Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,
Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.
A horror lived about the tarn, and clave
Like its own mists to all the mountain side:
For here two brothers, one a king, had met
And fought together; but their names were lost;
And each had slain his brother at a blow;
And down they fell and made the glen abhorr'd:
And there they lay till all their bones were bleach'd,
And lichen'd into colour with the crags:
And he, that once was king, had on a crown
Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.
And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,
All in a misty moonshine, unawares
Had trodden that crown'd skeleton, and the skull
Brake from the nape, and from the skull the crown