“’I saw four men, dear mother mine;
Not brighter is the Lord divine. 
They spoke to me of chivalry;
Through Arthur’s power of royalty,
In knightly honor well arrayed,
I shall receive the accolade.’”

                              WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, Parzival (Dippold’s tr.).

The mother, finding herself unable to detain him any longer, reluctantly consented to his departure, and, hoping that ridicule and lack of success would soon drive him back to her, prepared for him the motley garb of a fool and gave him a very sorry nag to ride.

“The boy, silly yet brave indeed,
Oft from his mother begged a steed. 
That in her heart she did lament;
She thought:  ’Him must I make content,
Yet must the thing an evil be.’ 
Thereafter further pondered she: 
’The folk are prone to ridicule. 
My child the garments of a fool
Shall on his shining body wear. 
If he be scoffed and beaten there,
Perchance he’ll come to me again.’”

                            WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, Parzival (Bayard Taylor’s tr.).

[Sidenote:  Parzival’s journey into the world.] Thus equipped, his mind well stored with all manner of unpractical advice given by his mother in further hopes of making a worldly career impossible for him, the young hero set out.  As he rode away from home, his heart was filled with regret at leaving and with an ardent desire to seek adventures abroad,—­conflicting emotions which he experienced for the first time in his life.  Herzeloide accompanied her son part way, kissed him good-by, and, as his beloved form disappeared from view in the forest paths, her heart broke and she breathed her last!

Parzival rode onward and soon came to a meadow, in which some tents were pitched.  He saw a beautiful lady asleep in one of these tents, and, dismounting, he wakened her with a kiss, thus obeying one of his mother’s injunctions—­to kiss every fair lady he met.  To his surprise, however, the lady seemed indignant; so he tried to pacify her by telling her that he had often thus saluted his mother.  Then, slipping the bracelet from off her arm, and carrying it away as a proof that she was not angry, he rode on.  Lord Orilus, the lady’s husband, hearing from her that a youth had kissed her, flew into a towering rage, and rode speedily away, hoping to overtake the impudent varlet and punish him.

Parzival, in the mean while, had journeyed on, and, passing through the forest, had seen a maiden weeping over the body of her slain lover.  In answer to his inquiries she told him that she was his cousin, Sigune, and that the dead man, Tchionatulander, had been killed in trying to fulfill a trifling request—­to recover her pet dog, which had been stolen.  Parzival promised to avenge Tchionatulander as soon as possible, and to remember that the name of the murderer was Orilus.