Hair, not breaking a single
Strand. Once a man
Has fallen in love with a woman
No one in all the world
Can lavish such wild adoration
Even on the objects she owns,
Touching them a hundred thousand
Times, caressing with his eyes,
His lips, his forehead, his face.
And all of it brings him happiness,
Fills him with the richest delight;
He presses it into his breast,
Slips it between his shirt
And his heart—worth more than a wagon-
Load of emeralds or diamonds,
Holy relics that free him
Of disease and infection: no powdered
Pearls and ground-up horn
And snail shells for him! No prayers
To Saints Martin and James: his faith
In her hair is complete, he needs
No more.^15
By making Guinevere’s hair an object of adoration, a sort of secular relic, Chrétien
here not only conveys the depths of Lancelot’s feeling but also pokes a bit of fun at
his hero. When Lancelot is on the point of killing an evil opponent, he overhears
Guinevere say that she wishes the “final blow be withheld.” Then
Nothing in the world could have made him
Fight, or even move,
No matter if it cost his life^16
