“In the wife’s woe, the mother was forgot. 
      At last (for I was all earth held of him
    Who had been all to her, and now was not)
      She rose, and looked with tearless eyes, but dim,
    In the babe’s face the father still to see;
    And lo! the babe was on another’s knee!

“Another’s lips had kissed it into sleep,
And o’er the sleep another watchful smiled;
The Fairy sate beside the lake’s still deep,
And hush’d with chaunted charms the orphan child! 
Scared at the mother’s cry, as fleets a dream,
Both Child and Fairy melt into the stream.” 
BULWER LYTTON, King Arthur.

The bereaved wife and mother now sorrowfully withdrew into a convent, while Lancelot was brought up in the palace of the Lady of the Lake, with his two cousins, Lyonel and Bohort.  Here he remained until he was eighteen, when the fairy herself brought him to court and presented him to the king.  Arthur then and there made him his friend and confidant, and gave him an honored place at the Round Table.  He was warmly welcomed by all the other knights also, whom he far excelled in beauty and courage.

“But one Sir Lancelot du Lake,
Who was approved well,
He for his deeds and feats of armes
All others did excell.”

                              Sir Lancelot du Lake (Old Ballad).

[Sidenote:  Lancelot and Guinevere.] Lancelot, however, was doomed to much sorrow, for he had no sooner beheld Queen Guinevere than he fell deeply in love with her.  The queen fully returned his affection, granted him many marks of her favor, and encouraged him to betray his friend and king on sundry occasions, which form the themes of various episodes in the romances of the time.  Lancelot, urged in one direction by passion, in another by loyalty, led a very unhappy life, which made him relapse into occasional fits of insanity, during which he roamed aimlessly about for many years.  When restored to his senses, he always returned to court, where he accomplished unheard-of deeds of valor, delivered many maidens in distress, righted the wrong wherever he found it, won all the honors at the tournaments, and ever remained faithful in his devotion to the queen, although many fair ladies tried to make him forget her.

Some of the poems, anxious to vindicate the queen, declare that there were two Guineveres, one pure, lovely, and worthy of all admiration, who suffered for the sins of the other, an unprincipled woman.  When Arthur discovered his wife’s intrigue with Lancelot, he sent her away, and Guinevere took refuge with her lover in Joyeuse Garde (Berwick), a castle he had won at the point of his lance to please her.  But the king, having ascertained some time after that the real Guinevere had been wrongfully accused, reinstated her in his favor, and Lancelot again returned to court, where he continued to love and serve the queen.

[Illustration:  SIR LANCELOT DU LAC.—­Sir John Gilbert.]