Then Gouvernail wept again in very great measure, and he said, “Lord, I obey.”  Therewith he mounted his horse, still weeping with a great passion of sorrow, and rode away from that place, and Houdaine followed after him and Sir Tristram was left sitting alone in the deep forest.

[Sidenote:  Sir Tristram wanders in the forest mad] After that Sir Tristram wandered for several days in the forest, he knew not whither for he was bewildered with that which had happened; so that he ate no food and took no rest of any sort for all that time.  Wherefore, because of the hardship he then endured, he by and by became distraught in his mind.  So, after a while, he forgot who he himself was, and what was his condition, or whence he came or whither he wended.  And because his armor weighed heavily upon him, he took it off and cast it away from him, and thereafter roamed half naked through the woodlands.

Now upon the sixth day of this wandering he came to the outskirts of the forest and nigh to the coast of the sea at a spot that was not very far away was the castle of the Lady Loise, where he had once stayed at the time that he undertook the adventure against Sir Nabon as aforetold.  There, being exhausted with hunger and weariness, he laid himself down in the sunlight out beyond the borders of the forest and presently fell into a deep sleep that was like to a swoon.

Now it chanced at that time that there came that way a certain damsel attendant upon the Lady Loise.  She perceiving that a man lay there on the grass at the edge of the forest was at first of a mind to quit that place.  Then, seeing that the man lay very strangely still as though he were dead, she went forward very softly and looked into his face.

Now that damsel had beheld Sir Tristram a great many times when he was at the castle of the Lady Loise; wherefore now, in spite of his being so starved and shrunken, and so unkempt and unshaved, she remembered his face and she knew that this was Sir Tristram.

Therewith the damsel hurried away to the Lady Loise (and the lady was not a very great distance away) and she said:  “Lady, yonder way there lieth a man by the forest side and I believe that it is Sir Tristram of Lyonesse.  Yet he is but half-clad and in great distress of body so that I know not of a surety whether it is really Sir Tristram or not.  Now I pray you come with me and look upon his face and see if you may know him.”

So the Lady Loise went with the damsel to where Sir Tristram lay and looked into his face, and she knew Sir Tristram in spite of his ill condition.

[Sidenote:  The Lady Loise finds Sir Tristram] Then the Lady Loise touched Sir Tristram upon the shoulder and shook him, and thereupon Sir Tristram awoke and sat up.  Then the Lady Loise said, “Sir Tristram, is it thou who liest here?” And Sir Tristram said, “I know not who I am.”  The Lady Loise said, “Messire, how came you here in this sad case?” And Sir Tristram said: