Here is a passage that must have delighted the hearts of Norman readers nurtured upon ideals of chivalry and courtly love, and seems as though designed to prepare the way for Arthur’s entry into the kingdom of chivalric romance. It is no great step from Arthur’s court, as here pictured, to the knightly fellowship of the Round Table, and all the other elaborate fictions of professional romantic scribes. Of a part with all this romantic presentment of the pomp and state surrounding the British king is Geoffrey’s constant exaltation of his “bounty,” and of his individual prowess as a warrior. Nor is the element of wonder lacking in the narrative given of Arthur’s exploits. He encounters at St Michael’s Mount, and slays by his own hand, a Spanish “giant of monstrous size,” who had carried away and killed the niece of Hoel, duke of Armorica. This adventure leads him to tell Kay and Bedivere, who had accompanied him on the expedition, how he had once, in Wales, despatched another formidable monster, “the giant Ritho,” of Mount Eryri, “who had fashioned him a furred cloak of the beards of the kings he had slain.” Again, in the last battle with the Romans, he is a truly Homeric hero. “He dashed forward upon the enemy, flung them down, smote them,--never a one did he meet, but he slew either him or his horse at a single buffet. They fled from him like sheep from a fierce lion madly famishing to devour aught that chance may throw in his way. Nought might armour avail them but that Caliburn would carve their souls from out them with their blood.”