“’Tis impossible,” cried Prince John, with well-feigned astonishment, “that so gallant a knight should be an unworthy or disobedient son!”

“Yet, my lord,” answered Cedric, “so it is with this Wilfred. He left my homely dwelling to mingle with the gay nobility of your brother’s court, where he learned to do those tricks of horsemanship which you prize so highly. He left it contrary to my wish and command; and in the days of Alfred that would have been termed disobedience—ay, and a crime severely punishable.”

“Alas!” replied Prince John, with a deep sigh of affected sympathy, “since your son was a follower of my unhappy brother, it need not be inquired where or from whom he learned the lesson of filial disobedience.”

Thus spake Prince John, wilfully forgetting, that of all the sons of Henry the Second, though no one was free from the charge, he himself had been most distinguished for rebellion and ingratitude to his father.

“I think,” said he, after a moment’s pause, “that my brother proposed to confer upon his favourite the rich manor of Ivanhoe.”

“He did endow him with it,” answered Cedric; “nor is it my least quarrel with my son, that he stooped to hold, as a feudal vassal, the very domains which his fathers possessed in free and independent right.”

“We shall then have your willing sanction, good Cedric,” said Prince John, “to confer this fief upon a person whose dignity will not be diminished by holding land of the British crown.—Sir Reginald Front- de-Bœut,” he said, turning towards that Baron, “I trust you will so keep the goodly Barony of Ivanhoe, that Sir Wilfred shall not incur his father’s further displeasure by again entering upon that fief.”

“By St. Anthony!” answered the black-browed giant, “I will consent that your Highness shall hold me a Saxon, if either Cedric, or Wilfred, or the best that ever bore English blood, shall wrench from me the gift with which your Highness has graced me.”

“Whoever shall call thee Saxon, Sir Baron,” replied Cedric, offended at a mode of expression by which the Normans frequently expressed their habitual contempt of the English, “will do thee an honour as great as it is undeserved.”

Front-de-Bœuf would have replied, but Prince John’s petulance and levity got the start.

“Assuredly,” said he, “my lords, the noble Cedric speaks truth; and his race may claim precedence over us as much in the length of their pedigrees as in the longitude of their cloaks.”

“They go before us indeed in the field—as deer before dogs,” said Malvoisin.

“And with good right may they go before us—forget not,” said the Prior Aymer, “the superior decency and decorum of their manners.”

“Their singular abstemiousness and temperance,” said De Bracy, forgetting the plan which promised him a Saxon bride.

“Together with the courage and conduct,” said Brian de Bois-Guilbert, “by which they distinguished themselves at Hastings and elsewhere.”

While, with smooth and smiling cheek, the courtiers, each in turn, followed their Prince’s example, and aimed a shaft of ridicule at Cedric, the face of the Saxon became inflamed with passion, and he glanced his eyes fiercely from one to another, as if the quick succession of so many injuries had prevented his replying to them in turn; or, like a baited bull, who, surrounded by his tormentors, is at a loss to choose from among them the immediate object of his revenge. At length he spoke, in a voice half choked with passion; and, addressing himself to Prince John, as the head and front of the offence which he had received, “Whatever,” he said, “have been the follies and vices of our race, a Saxon would have been held nidering1


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