In Manessier, when Perceval has finally accomplished the Quest by the slaying of Partinal, and has come for the third time to the Grail Castle (though even then he only reaches it after long wanderings and lights upon it by chance), news whereof is brought to the King;—
Li rois, à grant joie et grant feste
Est maintenant salis en piés
Et se senti sain et haitiés. (44,622-24)
Perceval is crowned King after his uncle's death, and reigns for seven years.
Thus, in the A versions, the healing of the Maimed King, and the consequent restoration to fertility and prosperity of his land, such are the tasks to be achieved by the hero of the Quest. In the B versions an entirely different series of conceptions is met with. Brons, the Fisher King, is to wait for his grandson, and to hand him the vessel which he received from Joseph. When this is done the meaning of the Trinity is to be known—[1]
Lors sera la senefiance
Accomplie et la demonstrance
De la benoite Trinité,
Qu'avons en trois parz devisée. (3,371-74)
Besides this, the Promised Knight is to visit Petrus, who may not pass away till he comes, and from whom he is to learn the power of the vessel, and the fate of Moys (v. 3,127-36). Finally, when he comes he is to fill the empty seat, and to find Moys, of whom it is said—
De lui plus ne pallera-on
Ne en fable ne en chançon,
Devant que cil revenra
Qui li liu vuit raemplira:
Cil-méismes le doit trouver. (2,815-19)
Here the only indication which can possibly be tortured into a hint of the waiting of a sick king for his deliverer is the reference to Petrus. It is not a little remarkable that when the latter is
- ↑ This, of course, belongs to the second of the two accounts we have found in the poem respecting the Promised Knight, the one which makes him the grandson and not the son merely of Brons.
