When Lancelot was kneeling in front of Urre, he said to King Arthur: ‘Need I do this, after everybody has failed?’
‘Of course you must do it. I command you.’
‘If you command me, I must. But it would be presumptuous to try—after everybody. Could I be let off?’
‘You are taking it the wrong way,’ said the King. ‘Of course it is not presumptuous for you to try. If you can’t do it, nobody can.’
Sir Urre, who was weak by now, raised himself on an elbow.
‘Please,’ he said. ‘I came for you to do it.’
Lancelot had tears in his eyes.
‘Oh, Sir Urre,’ he said, ‘if only I could help you, how willingly I would. But you don’t understand, you don’t understand.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Sir Urre.
Lancelot looked into the East, where he thought God lived, and said something in his mind. It was more or less like this: “I don’t want glory, but please can you save our honesty? And if you will heal this knight for the knight’s sake, please do.” Then he asked Sir Urre to show him his head.
Guenever, who was watching from her pavilion like a hawk, saw the two men fumbling together. Then she saw a movement in the people near, and a mutter came, and yells. Gentlemen began throwing their caps about, and shouting, and shaking hands. Arthur was crying the same words again and again, holding gruff Gawaine by the elbow and putting them into his ear. ‘It shut like a box! It shut like a box!’….In the middle, quite forgotten, her lover was kneeling by himself. This lonely and motionless figure knew a secret which was hidden from the others. The miracle was that he had been allowed to do a miracle. ‘And ever,’ says Malory, ‘Sir Lancelot wept, as he had been a child that had been beaten.’
the once and future king, t. h. white (via likeniobe)
Arthurian Legends 