But Merlin, when asked by Bellicent to corroborate the statement of Bleys, merely “Answer’d in riddling triplets of old time.” Finally, Leodogran’s faith is confirmed by a vision. Thus doubtfully, amidst rumour and portent, cloud and spiritual light, comes Arthur: “from the great deep” he comes, and in as strange fashion, at the end, “to the great deep he goes”—a king to be accepted in faith or rejected by doubt. Arthur and his ideal are objects of belief. All goes well while the knights hold that “The King will follow Christ, and we the King, In whom high God hath breathed a secret thing.” In history we find the same situation in the France of 1429— “The King will follow Jeanne, and we the King.” While this faith held, all went well; when the king ceased to follow, the spell was broken,—the Maid was martyred. In this sense the poet conceives the coming of Arthur, a sign to be spoken against, a test of high purposes, a belief redeeming and ennobling till faith fails, and the little rift within the lute, the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, makes discord of the music. As matter of legend, it is to be understood that Guinevere did not recognise Arthur when first he rode below her window— “Since he neither wore on helm or shield The golden symbol of his kinglihood.” But Lancelot was sent to bring the bride— “And return’d Among the flowers, in May, with Guinevere.” Then their long love may have begun, as in the story of Tristram sent to bring Yseult to be the bride of King Mark. In Malory, however, Lancelot does not come on the scene till after Arthur’s wedding and return from his conquering expedition to Rome. Then Lancelot wins renown, “wherefore Queen Guinevere had him in favour above all other knights; and in certain he loved the Queen again above all other ladies damosels of his life.” Lancelot, as we have seen, is practically a French creation, adopted to illustrate the chivalrous theory of love, with its bitter fruit. Though not of the original Celtic stock of legend, Sir Lancelot makes the romance what it is, and draws down the tragedy that originally turned on the sin of Arthur himself, the sin that gave birth to the traitor Modred. But the mediæval romancers disguised that form of the story, and the process of idealising Arthur reached such heights in the middle ages that Tennyson thought himself at liberty to paint the _Flos Regum_, “the blameless King.” He followed the _Brut ab Arthur_. “In short, God has not made since Adam was, the man more perfect than Arthur.” This is remote from the Arthur of the oldest Celtic legends, but justifies the poet in adapting Arthur to the ideal hero of the Idylls:—