Ivanhoe: A Romance
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 Cœur-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 name which has grown yet more so under my
wearing, becomes a hissing and a reproach. I lose fame, I lose honour,
I lose the prospect of such greatness as scarce emperors attain to—I
sacrifice mighty ambition, I destroy schemes built as high as the
mountains with which heathens say their heaven was once nearly
scaled—and yet, Rebecca,” he added, throwing himself at her feet, “this
greatness will I sacrifice, this fame will I renounce, this power will
I forego, even now when it is half within my grasp, if thou wilt say,
Bois-Guilbert, I receive thee for my lover.”
“Think not of such foolishness, Sir Knight,” answered Rebecca, “but
hasten to the Regent, the Queen Mother, and to Prince John—they cannot,
in honour to the English crown, allow of the proceedings of your Grand
Master. So shall you give me protection without sacrifice on your part,
or the pretext of requiring any requital from me.”
“With these I deal not,” he continued, holding the train of her
robe—“it is thee only I address; and what can counterbalance thy
choice? Bethink thee, were I a fiend, yet death is a worse, and it is
death who is my rival.”
“I weigh not these evils,” said Rebecca, afraid to provoke the wild
knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion, nor even
feign to endure it. “Be a man, be a Christian! If indeed thy faith
recommends that mercy which rather your tongues than your actions
pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital
which would change thy magnanimity into base barter.”
“No, damsel!” said the proud Templar, springing up, “thou shalt not
thus impose on me—if I renounce present fame and future ambition, I
renounce it for thy sake, and we will escape in company. Listen to me,
Rebecca,” he said, again softening his tone; “England,—Europe,—is not
the world. There are spheres in which we may act, ample enough even for
my ambition. We will go to Palestine, where Conrade, Marquis of
Montserrat, is my friend—a friend free as myself from the doting
scruples which fetter our free-born reason—rather with Saladin will we
league ourselves, than endure the scorn of the bigots whom we
contemn.—I will form new paths to greatness,” he continued, again
traversing the room with hasty strides—“Europe shall hear the loud step
of him she has driven from her sons!—Not the millions whom her
crusaders send to slaughter, can do so much to defend Palestine—not the
sabres of the thousands and ten thousands of Saracens can hew their way
so deep into that land for which nations are striving, as the strength
and policy of me and those brethren, who, in despite of yonder old
bigot, will adhere to me in good and evil. Thou shalt be a queen,
Rebecca—on Mount Carmel shall we pitch the throne which my valour will
gain for you, and I will exchange my long-desired batoon for a
sceptre!”
“A dream,” said Rebecca; “an empty vision of the night, which, were it
a waking reality, affects me not. Enough, that the power which thou
mightest acquire, I will never share; nor hold I so light of country or
religious faith, as to esteem him who is willing to barter these ties,
and cast away the bonds of the Order of which he is a sworn member, in