Just then the queen was walking through the hail looking for the king. He greeted her graciously as she approached, took her by the hand and begged her to sit down. He put his arm about her and kissed her; and in doing so he turned his head and saw a leaf hanging caught in her hair. So he reached up, pulled it out and threw it on the ground, with a cheerful joking word to his wife.

The prophet turned his eyes on this scene, and laughed. It made the men standing nearby turn to look at him in surprise, since he had been refusing to laugh.

Merlin stayed silent, and avoided an explanation of his laughter. Rodarch continued to press him more and more, adding presents to prayers. At length the prophet grew angry at his generosity and said: "A gift is what a miser loves and a grasping man works hard to get. Such men are corruptible by presents and will turn their shallow minds whichever way they are told, because what they have is not enough for them. But for me the acorns of pleasant Calidon are enough, and the sparkling streams that run through fragrant meadows. Let the miser take his gifts: gifts do not buy me. Unless I get my freedom and may go back to the green woodland valleys, I shall refuse to explain my laughter."

So, since Rodarch had failed to change the prophet's mind by any gift or discover why he had laughed, he ordered the chains to be struck off at once and gave him permission to leave for the forest wilderness, so as to make him willing to give the explanation for which the king was eager. Merlin, his spirits rising because he could now leave, then said:

"The reason I laughed, Rodarch, was that in one and the same act you earned both approval and disapproval. When just now you pulled out the leaf the queen unknowingly had in her hair, you were more faithful to her than she had been to you when she crept into the undergrowth, where her lover met her and lay with her. As she lay there, a leaf fallen by chance caught in her loosened hair. You plucked it out, unknowing."

Vita Merlini