t for marriage had
no man seen." She was accompanied into the strange land by her
gentlewoman, dame Brangian, to whom the Queen of Ireland had given a
powerful love philtre to be administered to the husband and wife on the
wedding day: whoso drank of that philtre with another, should love that
other with a love that knows no ending. By a fatal error, it was to
Tristan and Iseut that the philtre was given during the voyage; and from
that time an invincible passion drew them toward each other. Love so
overmastered Tristan that he was false to his knightly vows, false to
the trust imposed, and yet happy in his guilty love for the betrothed of
King Mark. And Iseut returned his love, and moaned at the thought of
Mark.

When they reached the court of Cornwall some stratagem must be devised
to prevent the King from discovering that his bride had been unfaithful;
but it is always easy for the romancer to extricate himself from
entanglements that seem to the ordinary mind hopelessly involved, and
the solution generally suggests fresh complications. In this case it was
arranged that the lady-in-waiting, Brangian, should personate the bride
at night, trusting that King Mark, fuddled with wine and sleep, would
not discover the fraud. The scheme was entirely successful; King Mark
suspected no wrong. But la Belle Iseut, that gentle lady whom all loved,
determined to leave no witness to the shame of herself and Tristan,
hired two murderers to slay the faithful Brangian! More pitiful than
Iseut, the murderers were smitten with compassion and merely carried off
their victim and left her bound fast to a tree, from which she was
rescued by the gallant Saracen knight, Sir Palamedes. Palamedes, indeed,
was also one of Iseut's lovers, and had loved her in Ireland before she
met Tristan. But Iseut scorned him now as she had scorned him then: her
whole heart was given to Tristan, for Tristan was a knight of greater
prowess than he. Iseut loved Tristan, and not her husband; the husband
at length grew suspicious, and the lover was forced to flee for his
life.

Many adventures befell him, but his heart was still with la Belle Iseut.
Wounded once more by a poisoned arrow, he could no longer return to
Iseut to be cured, and bethought him of his cousin, Iseut de la Blanche
Main, a lady skilled in surgery, who lived in Brittany. To Iseut of the
White Hand, then, went Tristan, and a new and most curious episode in
the love story began. For the new I