Ivanhoe by Walter Scott (world best books to read .TXT) 📖

THOU hast left them to their own.

But, present still, though now unseen;

When brightly shines the prosperous day,

Be thoughts of THEE a cloudy screen

To temper the deceitful ray.

And oh, when stoops on Judah’s path

In shade and storm the frequent night,

Be THOU, long-suffering, slow to wrath,

A burning, and a shining light!

Our harps we left by Babel’s streams,

The tyrant’s jest, the Gentile’s scorn;

No censer round our altar beams,

And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn.

But THOU hast said, the blood of goat,

The flesh of rams, I will not prize;

A contrite heart, and humble thought,

Are mine accepted sacrifice.

When the sounds of Rebecca’s devotional hymn had died away in

silence, the low knock at the door was again renewed. “Enter,”

she said, “if thou art a friend; and if a foe, I have not the

means of refusing thy entrance.”

“I am,” said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, entering the apartment,

“friend or foe, Rebecca, as the event of this interview shall

make me.”

Alarmed at the sight of this man, whose licentious passion she

considered as the root of her misfortunes, Rebecca drew backward

with a cautious and alarmed, yet not a timorous demeanour, into

the farthest corner of the apartment, as if determined to retreat

as far as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat became

no longer possible. She drew herself into an attitude not of

defiance, but of resolution, as one that would avoid provoking

assault, yet was resolute to repel it, being offered, to the

utmost of her power.

“You have no reason to fear me, Rebecca,” said the Templar; “or

if I must so qualify my speech, you have at least NOW no reason

to fear me.”

“I fear you not, Sir Knight,” replied Rebecca, although her

short-drawn breath seemed to belie the heroism of her accents;

“my trust is strong, and I fear thee not.”

“You have no cause,” answered Bois-Guilbert, gravely; “my former

frantic attempts you have not now to dread. Within your call are

guards, over whom I have no authority. They are designed to

conduct you to death, Rebecca, yet would not suffer you to be

insulted by any one, even by me, were my frenzy---for frenzy it

is---to urge me so far.”

“May Heaven be praised!” said the Jewess; “death is the least of

my apprehensions in this den of evil.”

“Ay,” replied the Templar, “the idea of death is easily received

by the courageous mind, when the road to it is sudden and open.

A thrust with a lance, a stroke with a sword, were to me little

---To you, a spring from a dizzy battlement, a stroke with a

sharp poniard, has no terrors, compared with what either thinks

disgrace. Mark me---I say this---perhaps mine own sentiments of

honour are not less fantastic, Rebecca, than thine are; but we

know alike how to die for them.”

“Unhappy man,” said the Jewess; “and art thou condemned to expose

thy life for principles, of which thy sober judgment does not

acknowledge the solidity? Surely this is a parting with your

treasure for that which is not bread---but deem not so of me.

Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of

human opinion, but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages.”

“Silence, maiden,” answered the Templar; “such discourse now

avails but little. Thou art condemned to die not a sudden and

easy death, such as misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a

slow, wretched, protracted course of torture, suited to what the

diabolical bigotry of these men calls thy crime.”

“And to whom---if such my fate---to whom do I owe this?” said

Rebecca “surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal

cause, dragged me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose

of his own, strives to exaggerate the wretched fate to which he

exposed me.”

“Think not,” said the Templar, “that I have so exposed thee; I

would have bucklered thee against such danger with my own bosom,

as freely as ever I exposed it to the shafts which had otherwise

reached thy life.”

“Had thy purpose been the honourable protection of the innocent,”

said Rebecca, “I had thanked thee for thy care---as it is, thou

hast claimed merit for it so often, that I tell thee life is

worth nothing to me, preserved at the price which thou wouldst

exact for it.”

“Truce with thine upbraidings, Rebecca,” said the Templar; “I

have my own cause of grief, and brook not that thy reproaches

should add to it.”

“What is thy purpose, then, Sir Knight?” said the Jewess; “speak

it briefly.---If thou hast aught to do, save to witness the

misery thou hast caused, let me know it; and then, if so it

please you, leave me to myself---the step between time and

eternity is short but terrible, and I have few moments to prepare

for it.”

“I perceive, Rebecca,” said Bois-Guilbert, “that thou dost

continue to burden me with the charge of distresses, which most

fain would I have prevented.”

“Sir Knight,” said Rebecca, “I would avoid reproaches---But what

is more certain than that I owe my death to thine unbridled

passion?”

“You err---you err,”---said the Templar, hastily, “if you impute

what I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.

---Could I guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some

flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to

the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the

present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and

above the hundreds of our Order, who think and feel as men free

from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of

his opinions and actions?”

“Yet,” said Rebecca, “you sate a judge upon me, innocent---most

innocent---as you knew me to be---you concurred in my

condemnation, and, if I aright understood, are yourself to appear

in arms to assert my guilt, and assure my punishment.”

“Thy patience, maiden,” replied the Templar. “No race knows so

well as thine own tribes how to submit to the time, and so to

trim their bark as to make advantage even of an adverse wind.”

“Lamented be the hour,” said Rebecca, “that has taught such art

to the House of Israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire

bends the stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own

governors, and the denizens of their own free independent state,

must crouch before strangers. It is our curse, Sir Knight,

deserved, doubtless, by our own misdeeds and those of our

fathers; but you---you who boast your freedom as your birthright,

how much deeper is your disgrace when you stoop to soothe the

prejudices of others, and that against your own conviction?”

“Your words are bitter, Rebecca,” said Bois-Guilbert, pacing the

apartment with impatience, “but I came not hither to bandy

reproaches with you.---Know that Bois-Guilbert yields not to

created man, although circumstances may for a time induce him to

alter his plan. His will is the mountain stream, which may

indeed be turned for a little space aside by the rock, but fails

not to find its course to the ocean. That scroll which warned

thee to demand a champion, from whom couldst thou think it came,

if not from Bois-Guilbert? In whom else couldst thou have excited

such interest?”

“A brief respite from instant death,” said Rebecca, “which will

little avail me---was this all thou couldst do for one, on whose

head thou hast heaped sorrow, and whom thou hast brought near

even to the verge of the tomb?”

“No maiden,” said Bois-Guilbert, “this was NOT all that I

purposed. Had it not been for the accursed interference of yon

fanatical dotard, and the fool of Goodalricke, who, being a

Templar, affects to think and judge according to the ordinary

rules of humanity, the office of the Champion Defender had

devolved, not on a Preceptor, but on a Companion of the Order.

Then I myself---such was my purpose---had, on the sounding of the

trumpet, appeared in the lists as thy champion, disguised indeed

in the fashion of a roving knight, who seeks adventures to prove

his shield and spear; and then, let Beaumanoir have chosen not

one, but two or three of the brethren here assembled, I had not

doubted to cast them out of the saddle with my single lance.

Thus, Rebecca, should thine innocence have been avouched, and to

thine own gratitude would I have trusted for the reward of my

victory.”

“This, Sir Knight,” said Rebecca, “is but idle boasting---a brag

of what you would have done had you not found it convenient to do

otherwise. You received my glove, and my champion, if a creature

so desolate can find one, must encounter your lance in the lists

---yet you would assume the air of my friend and protector!”

“Thy friend and protector,” said the Templar, gravely, “I will

yet be---but mark at what risk, or rather at what certainty, of

dishonour; and then blame me not if I make my stipulations,

before I offer up all that I have hitherto held dear, to save the

life of a Jewish maiden.”

“Speak,” said Rebecca; “I understand thee not.”

“Well, then,” said Bois-Guilbert, “I will speak as freely as ever

did doting penitent to his ghostly father, when placed in the

tricky confessional.---Rebecca, if I appear not in these lists I

lose fame and rank---lose that which is the breath of my

nostrils, the esteem, I mean, in which I am held by my brethren,

and the hopes I have of succeeding to that mighty authority,

which is now wielded by the bigoted dotard Lucas de Beaumanoir,

but of which I should make a different use. Such is my certain

doom, except I appear in arms against thy cause. Accursed be he

of Goodalricke, who baited this trap for me! and doubly accursed

Albert de Malvoisin, who withheld me from the resolution I had

formed, of hurling back the glove at the face of the

superstitious and superannuated fool, who listened to a charge so

absurd, and against a creature so high in mind, and so lovely in

form as thou art!”

“And what now avails rant or flattery?” answered Rebecca. “Thou

hast made thy choice between causing to be shed the blood of an

innocent woman, or of endangering thine own earthly state and

earthly hopes---What avails it to reckon together?---thy choice

is made.”

“No, Rebecca,” said the knight, in a softer tone, and drawing

nearer towards her; “my choice is NOT made---nay, mark, it is

thine to make the election. If I appear in the lists, I must

maintain my name in arms; and if I do so, championed or

unchampioned, thou diest by the stake and faggot, for there lives

not the knight who hath coped with me in arms on equal issue, or

on terms of vantage, save Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and his minion

of Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe, as thou well knowest, is unable to bear his

corslet, and Richard is in a foreign prison. If I appear, then

thou diest, even although thy charms should instigate some

hot-headed youth to enter the lists in thy defence.”

“And what avails repeating this so often?” said Rebecca.

“Much,” replied the Templar; “for thou must learn to look at thy

fate on every side.”

“Well, then, turn the tapestry,” said the Jewess, “and let me see

the other side.”

“If I appear,” said Bois-Guilbert, “in the fatal lists, thou

diest by a slow and cruel death, in pain such as they say is

destined to the guilty hereafter. But if I appear not, then am I

a degraded and dishonoured knight, accused of witchcraft and of

communion with infidels---the illustrious