We have seen that in the original story of Geoffrey the treason of Mordred and the final scenes take place while Arthur is warring against the Romans, very shortly after he has established his sovereignty in the Isle of Britain. Walter, or Chrestien, or whoever it was, saw that such a waste of good romantic material could never be tolerated. The romance is never--it has not been even in the hands of its most punctilious modern practitioners--very observant of miserable _minutiae_ of chronology; and after all, it was reasonable that Arthur's successes should give him some considerable enjoyment of his kingdom. It will not do to scrutinise too narrowly, or we should have to make Arthur a very old man at his death, and Guinevere a lady too elderly to leave any excuse for her proceedings, in order to accommodate the birth of Lancelot (which happened, according to the _Merlin_, after the king came to the throne), the birth of Lancelot's son Galahad, Galahad's life till even the early age of fifteen, when knighthood was then given, the Quest of the Sangreal itself, and the subsequent breaking out of Mordred's rebellion, consequent upon the war between Lancelot and Arthur after the deaths of Agravain and Gareth. But the allowance of a golden age of comparatively quiet sovereignty, of feasts and joustings at Camelot, and Caerleon, and Carlisle, of adventures major and minor, and of the great Graal-quest, is but a moderate demand for any romancer to make. At any rate, he or they made it, and justified the demand amply by the result. The contents of the central Arthurian story thus elaborated may be divided into four parts: 1. The miscellaneous adventures of the several knights, the king himself sometimes taking share in them. 2. Those of Sir Tristram, of which more presently. 3. The Quest of the Sangreal. 4. The Death of Arthur. [Sidenote: _Stories of Gawain and other knights._]