In quoting this passage, Professor Heinzel remarks: 'Auch der _Perlesvaus_ ist einem grösseren Romanwerk einverleibt, aus dem die Handschrift von Mons den _Perlesvaus_ ausgeschrieben hat. Was ihm folgte muss eine Art _Lancelot_ gewesen sein.'[148]
There is a further and interesting possibility before us. The compilers may--in one instance, I think, we can show reason to believe that they did--have incorporated the Chrétien _Perceval_ (or a version closely akin to it) into their cycles as representing the _Queste_.
In the work of preparing these studies I felt that I ought to leave no available version of the _Lancelot_ unexplored, and therefore undertook to read carefully the immense compilation generally known as the Dutch _Lancelot_. Well was it for me that I did not shrink from the task! I had not read far before I began to suspect that the text represented by this translation was, in every respect, a fuller and a better text than that used by Dr. Sommer in his Malory collation; in the _Queste_ section in particular was this the case. In the succeeding chapters I intend to go fully into what is, I believe, in the interests of Arthurian criticism, a very important discovery. Here I will only say that I eventually found that the text of the Dutch _Lancelot_, of the printed version of the prose _Lancelot_ Lenoire, 1533 (which, as I have remarked before, Dr. Sommer does not chronicle), and Malory's _Lancelot_ and _Queste_ sections all stand together as representing a much fuller and more accurate text than that of the prose _Lancelot_ 1513, or the _Queste_ MSS. consulted by Dr. Furnivall for his edition of that romance. Whether we have not here an important part of the _un_shortened pseudo-Borron-_Lancelot_ into which the Map _Queste_ has been introduced is a matter for careful investigation. The point to which at the present moment I would draw attention is, that the Dutch _Lancelot_ incorporates a very considerable section of a _Perceval_ romance, which bears a very close resemblance to Chrétien's poem, with this curious difference, that it gives an account of the achieving of the adventures named by the Grail messenger, which, so far as I know, is found nowhere else. This section, which occupies over two thousand lines, demands a special study, but for us its significance lies in this that it seems to point to the conclusion that in the evolution of a _Lancelot-Perceval_ cycle (the existence of which I think we may hold for proven) the compilers allowed themselves considerable latitude in the _Queste_ section. There were several Perceval _Questes_ to select from, and they took which they preferred, even pressing the original, manifestly independent, _Perceval_ romances into their service. I suspect that this variation in the Perceval _Queste_ helped towards its suppression in favour of the Galahad variant, which had the advantage of existing only in one form, though the cause mainly operating was an entirely different one.[149]