Then the porter said: 

“Come in, lord fool; the Hairy Urgan’s son, I know, and like your father.”

And when he was within the courts the serving men ran after him and cried: 

“The fool! the fool!”

But he made play with them though they cast stones and struck him as they laughed, and in the midst of laughter and their cries, as the rout followed him, he came to that hall where, at the Queen’s side, King Mark sat under his canopy.

And as he neared the door with his club at his neck, the King said: 

“Here is a merry fellow, let him in.”

And they brought him in, his club at his neck.  And the King said: 

“Friend, well come; what seek you here?”

“Iseult,” said he, “whom I love so well; I bring my sister with me, Brunehild, the beautiful.  Come, take her, you are weary of the Queen.  Take you my sister and give me here Iseult, and I will hold her and serve you for her love.”

The King said laughing: 

“Fool, if I gave you the Queen, where would you take her, pray?”

“Oh! very high,” he said, “between the clouds and heaven, into a fair chamber glazed.  The beams of the sun shine through it, yet the winds do not trouble it at all.  There would I bear the Queen into that crystal chamber of mine all compact of roses and the morning.”

The King and his barons laughed and said: 

“Here is a good fool at no loss for words.”

But the fool as he sat at their feet gazed at Iseult most fixedly.

“Friend,” said King Mark, “what warrant have you that the Queen would heed so foul a fool as you?”

“O!  Sire,” he answered gravely, “many deeds have I done for her, and my madness is from her alone.”

“What is your name?” they said, and laughed.

“Tristan,” said he, “that loved the Queen so well, and still till death will love her.”

But at the name the Queen angered and weakened together, and said: 
“Get hence for an evil fool!”

But the fool, marking her anger, went on: 

“Queen Iseult, do you mind the day, when, poisoned by the Morholt’s spear, I took my harp to sea and fell upon your shore?  Your mother healed me with strange drugs.  Have you no memory, Queen?”

But Iseult answered: 

“Out, fool, out!  Your folly and you have passed the bounds!”

But the fool, still playing, pushed the barons out, crying: 

“Out! madmen, out!  Leave me to counsel with Iseult, since I come here for the love of her!”

And as the King laughed, Iseult blushed and said: 

“King, drive me forth this fool!”

But the fool still laughed and cried: 

“Queen, do you mind you of the dragon I slew in your land?  I hid its tongue in my hose, and, burnt of its venom, I fell by the roadside.  Ah! what a knight was I then, and it was you that succoured me.”