This wandering race, sever’d from other men,
Boast yet their intercourse with human arts;
The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt,
Find them acquainted with their secret treasures:
And unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms,
Display undreamt-of powers when gather’d by
them.
The Jew
Our history must needs retrograde for the space of
a few pages, to inform the reader of certain passages
material to his understanding the rest of this important
narrative. His own intelligence may indeed have
easily anticipated that, when Ivanhoe sunk down, and
seemed abandoned by all the world, it was the importunity
of Rebecca which prevailed on her father to have the
gallant young warrior transported from the lists to
the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in
the suburbs of Ashby.
It would not have been difficult to have persuaded
Isaac to this step in any other circumstances, for
his disposition was kind and grateful. But he
had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of
his persecuted people, and those were to be conquered.
“Holy Abraham!” he exclaimed, “he
is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore
trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his
corslet of goodly price—–but to carry
him to our house!—–damsel, hast thou
well considered?—–he is a Christian,
and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and
Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.”
“Speak not so, my dear father,” replied
Rebecca; “we may not indeed mix with them in
banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery,
the Gentile becometh the Jew’s brother.”
“I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob Ben Tudela
would opine on it,” replied Isaac;—–“nevertheless,
the good youth must not bleed to death. Let Seth
and Reuben bear him to Ashby.”
“Nay, let them place him in my litter,”
said Rebecca; “I will mount one of the palfreys.”
“That were to expose thee to the gaze of those
dogs of Ishmael and of Edom,” whispered Isaac,
with a suspicious glance towards the crowd of knights
and squires. But Rebecca was already busied in
carrying her charitable purpose into effect, and listed
not what he said, until Isaac, seizing the sleeve
of her mantle, again exclaimed, in a hurried voice—–“Beard
of Aaron!—–what if the youth perish!—–if
he die in our custody, shall we not be held guilty
of his blood, and be torn to pieces by the multitude?”
“He will not die, my father,” said Rebecca,
gently extricating herself from the grasp of Isaac
“he will not die unless we abandon him; and
if so, we are indeed answerable for his blood to God
and to man.”
“Nay,” said Isaac, releasing his hold,
“it grieveth me as much to see the drops of
his blood, as if they were so many golden byzants
from mine own purse; and I well know, that the lessons
of Miriam, daughter of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium
whose soul is in Paradise, have made thee skilful
in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft
of herbs, and the force of elixirs. Therefore,
do as thy mind giveth thee—–thou art
a good damsel, a blessing, and a crown, and a song
of rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the
people of my fathers.”
