There is a disposition to think that the extension of Gautier broke off in the middle of a sentence, which was brought by the poet who followed him to its due point, and the narrative continues thereafter, in his hands remaining to the very end. This poet was Manessier. We have, however, to remember that at or about the alleged break there intervened another singer, who intended, almost certainly, to furnish an alternative or independent conclusion, the term of which may have been by possibility at the penultimate completed sentence of Gautier's version, wherein the Fisher King calls Perceval to enter within the fold of the house--

"Sires soiés de ma maison,
Je vos mec tout en abandon
Quan que jou ai, sans nul dangier;
À tous jours vos arai plus cier
Que nul homme qui jà mais soit."

It would be in this case much the same ending as that of the Berne Perceval. Alternatively, there may have been some further extension which is not now extant, or Gerbert, on his own part, may have failed to complete as he proposed. I speak with considerable diffidence, because the only editor of the text has given such a vague account of that which preceded the interpolation and followed it that it is impossible to decide whether he has mistaken the line of Gautier, which is said to be the point of intervention, or whether the experiment of the Broken Sword is repeated a second time--with glaring inconsequence--and proves a failure, soon after it was resoldered in Gautier's text. Again, the welcome among his household by the Fisher King is repeated at the end in the one manuscript which gives--according to the editor--the narrative of Gerbert in extenso. There is, of course, another alternative which would exonerate

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