Percival could not forget what he had heard and seen. He cared no more for hunting, and spent his days and nights in dreaming of swords, knighthood, and battle. Herzeleide asked her son what ailed him, and when she learnt the cause of his sorrow, her heart was filled with terror lest, inheriting his father’s heroic spirit, Percival might meet with his father’s fate. At length she gave way to the lad’s entreaties, and let him go, but with a breaking heart. Percival felt the parting with his mother very much; but youth and hope were strong in his heart, and thoughts of the joy of meeting again soon thrust the sorrow of parting into the background. Lost in such reflections, he came to a meadow in which some tents were pitched. In one of these he saw a couch on which a beautiful woman lay asleep. She was richly dressed; her girdle blazed with precious stones, as did also the ornaments on her arms, neck, and fingers. He thought, as he plucked a flower, so he might also steal a kiss from the rosy lips of the sleeping beauty; but, as he did so, she awoke, and was very angry. “Don’t be angry,” he said, throwing himself at her feet. “I have often kissed my mother when I have caught her asleep, and you are more beautiful than my mother.” The lady gazed at him in astonishment, and listened to his boyish confidences about going to Arthur’s court, being made a knight, and doing great deeds thereafter. Suddenly a horn sounded at no great distance. “That is my husband,” cried the lady; “quick, boy, get away as fast as you can, or we are both undone.” “Oh, I am not afraid,” he said. “Look at my quiver; it is quite full; I could defend you as well as myself. Let me have one of your bracelets as a sign that you are not angry with me.” As he spoke, he slipped the bracelet off her arm, left the tent, mounted his horse, and rode away. Shortly after this Lord Orilus, the lady’s husband, appeared, and with him many knights. When he heard from her what had happened, he fell into a passion, and swore that he would hang the “impudent varlet” if he could catch him. But though he set out at once in pursuit, he could see nothing of the youth. Meanwhile Percival continued his journey. That night he slept in the forest, and went on his way next morning at an easy pace. As he was passing under a rock, he saw a maiden sitting by a spring that gushed out of it. She wept bitterly as she bent over a dead man, whose head lay in her lap. Percival spoke to her, and tried to comfort her by saying that he would avenge the death of the murdered man, for murdered he was sure he was. He then told her his name, and she said that she was his cousin Sigune, and that the dead man was her old playfellow Tchionatulander, who had met his end in trying to gratify a silly wish of hers—a wish she had no sooner given utterance to than she repented. She had lost a dog, and had wanted to have it again. That was the cause of all her sorrow.