Merlin now devises a series of tests for his son. Like Marco Colonna in Monna Vanna, he would be cruel only to be kind. The first is the trial by separation. In a lonely tower Lanceor is found by Joyzelle. The place is as forbidding as the country of Browning's Childe Roland. Joyzelle calls to Lanceor, who rushes to her arms. As they embrace each other, trees put on full bloom, flowers carpet the ground, and all nature bursts into life--only the order of decay and bloom is reversed. Then Merlin has Lanceor bitten by a serpent, and falling into a magic slumber Arielle appears, and he finds her instead of Joyzelle, who has been sternly sent away. She returns only to find her lover desperately enamoured of a strange woman. Even this does not shake her faith. She refuses to believe the treachery of Lanceor. After Arielle has departed, in a scene of singular power he drives forth his patient Griselidis. It is almost brutal in its intensity. In Act III Arielle bids Merlin leave Lanceor and seize Joyzelle for himself,--a genuine subconscious suggestion this! In the security of her wonderful love he may find safety from that Viviane, who later saps his soul in the old-world wood of Broceliande. Joyzelle is proof against the most insidious temptations, and in the trial by faith she emerges triumphantly. Merlin suddenly commands her to look around, and she will see Lanceor held captive in the arms of another. She moves away without turning her head, thus averting the fate of a second Lot's wife. The spectator, drugged by this time, begins to wonder if this paragon has an Achilles heel. Merlin is quite as envious, for in the next trial he causes Lanceor--poor Lanceor!--to be brought nigh death's door, and Joyzelle, rendered desperate, throws herself at the cruel parent's feet. She promises to fulfil any condition he may see fit in his caprice to impose. Impose one he does. If Lanceor is restored to health, will she become Merlin's bride instead of the son's? This, it must be admitted, is a very ingenious form of torture, and yet, when in the bigness of her soul Joyzelle acquiesces, we feel that another bead has been touched in this rosary of pain.