Bors resists the devil’s temptation

Bors resists the devil’s temptation when a demonic apparition exploits his grief for Lionel and fear for Launcelot to press him into a sexual bargain. The trial stages a conflict between apparent compassion and chastity: the beautiful woman’s plea, the spectacle of twelve women at the tower’s edge, and the warning that Launcelot may die all seem to make refusal costly. Bors nevertheless refuses, witnesses the illusion collapse, and reaches an abbey, where he asks an abbot for guidance. The episode tests not simply whether he will yield to desire, but whether fear and pity can be made to displace his religious judgment.

The Dream and the Threat of Blame

Before the temptation, Bors asks a priest to interpret the dream he had the previous night. He recounts its images of a great bird in a forest, two smaller birds, a rotten tree, and white flowers. The priest does not give the whole interpretation at once, promising to explain the remaining part the next day, but makes the immediate stakes plain: the white bird signifies a fair, rich woman who has long loved Bors, and the great bird signifies what will make him refuse her.

The priest frames that refusal as a choice with terrible consequences. He says that if Bors rejects the woman, Launcelot may die, and that Bors will be blamed both for Lionel’s death and for failing to rescue his cousin when he could have done so easily. The accusation strikes at Bors’s identity as a loyal companion and rescuer: he had chosen to save a maiden who, in the priest’s account, did not belong to him, instead of protecting his brother and cousin. Bors understands the interpretation and says that nothing would be worse to him than Launcelot’s death through his own failure. The temptation thus begins not with the woman’s appearance, but with a carefully constructed burden of guilt.

The Tower’s Offer

The priest leads Bors into a high tower, where knights and ladies welcome him and remove his armor. In its place, attendants put an ermine-lined mantle around him and surround him with such comforts that he forgets his sorrow and ceases to think of Lionel and Launcelot. The change in setting and attention makes the earlier warning feel distant: Bors is drawn from the obligations of the road into an enclosed world of luxury and pleasure.

A woman then appears, described as more richly dressed than any queen Bors has seen and as the fairest in the world. The company presents her as the lady they all serve, claiming that she loves Bors above every other knight and will have no other. She tells him that she has loved him longer than he knows and offers to make him richer than any man of his age. Her appeal joins beauty and wealth to apparent devotion, while the priest’s interpretation has already given the offer a coercive edge: Bors has been told that rejecting this love may cost Launcelot his life.

Bors is uneasy rather than persuaded. He refuses to break his chastity, yet the woman continues to press him, invoking his beauty and reported courage as reasons he must grant her love. When he still refuses, she performs grief and says that his decision has brought her near death. She takes his hand and urges him to watch what will happen to her. Bors answers that he will never see her die, but the apparent consequence of refusal is immediately raised before his eyes.

The Apparition’s Collapse

The woman goes up to a high battlement with twelve gentlewomen. One calls down, asking Bors to have mercy and let her lady have her will; otherwise, the women claim, they too must die with her by falling from the tower. Their fine appearance and elevated station intensify the appeal to pity and honor. The scene makes the demand seem larger than a private encounter: Bors is asked to accept responsibility for the lives and reputations of an entire company of women.

Yet the narrative distinguishes the spectacle from Bors’s inward judgment. Though he feels pity, he would rather that all the women lose their souls than that he lose his own. They fall together, but instead of confirming the threatened deaths, the fall exposes the scene as a deception. Bors is astonished; he blesses himself, hears a great cry like the noise of the fiends of hell, and sees the tower, the lady, the gentlewomen, and even the chapel where he had left his brother disappear. The richly furnished refuge and the apparent emergency prove to be one demonic illusion, designed to make spiritual compromise look like mercy.

Escape and the Turn to Counsel

After the vision vanishes, Bors raises both hands to heaven and gives thanks for having escaped. He takes his arms and horse and rides on. The escape is not presented as a victory won through force: it comes through his refusal to let the staged crisis overrule his commitment to chastity, followed by his recognition of the deception and appeal to God.

A clock sounds on his right, and Bors follows it to an abbey enclosed by high walls. The monks admit him and suppose that he is one of the knights of the Grail quest. They bring him to the abbot in a chapel. Bors identifies himself as a knight errant and recounts the adventure he has seen; the abbot marvels that a knight of his age could have been so strong in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than advise him immediately, the abbot sends him to rest, saying that the hour is too late and that he will counsel him the next day. The episode therefore ends with Bors safe but still awaiting interpretation: after the false priest’s threatening reading and the devil’s theatrical test, he seeks further guidance within a religious house.