"Psha," replied the Templar, "what hast thou to fear?--Thou knowest the
vows of our order."
"Right well," said De Bracy, "and also how they are kept. Come,
Sir Templar, the laws of gallantry have a liberal interpretation in
Palestine, and this is a case in which I will trust nothing to your
conscience."
"Hear the truth, then," said the Templar; "I care not for your blue-eyed
beauty. There is in that train one who will make me a better mate."
"What! wouldst thou stoop to the waiting damsel?" said De Bracy.
"No, Sir Knight," said the Templar, haughtily. "To the waiting-woman
will I not stoop. I have a prize among the captives as lovely as thine
own."
"By the mass, thou meanest the fair Jewess!" said De Bracy.
"And if I do," said Bois-Guilbert, "who shall gainsay me?"
"No one that I know," said De Bracy, "unless it be your vow of celibacy,
or a cheek of conscience for an intrigue with a Jewess."
"For my vow," said the Templar, "our Grand Master hath granted me a
dispensation. And for my conscience, a man that has slain three hundred
Saracens, need not reckon up every little failing, like a village girl
at her first confession upon Good Friday eve."
"Thou knowest best thine own privileges," said De Bracy. "Yet, I would
have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer's money bags,
than on the black eyes of the daughter."
"I can admire both," answered the Templar; "besides, the old Jew is but
half-prize. I must share his spoils with Front-de-Boeuf, who will not
lend us the use of his castle for nothing. I must have something that I
can term exclusively my own by this foray of ours, and I have fixed on
the lovely Jewess as my peculiar prize. But, now thou knowest my drift,
thou wilt resume thine own original plan, wilt thou not?--Thou hast
nothing, thou seest, to fear from my interference."
"No," replied De Bracy, "I will remain beside my prize. What thou
sayst is passing true, but I like not the privileges acquired by
the dispensation of the Grand Master, and the merit acquired by the
slaughter of three hundred Saracens. You have too good a right to a free
pardon, to render you very scrupulous about peccadilloes."
While this dialogue was proceeding, Cedric was endeavouring to wring out
of those who guarded him an avowal of their character and purpose. "You
should be Englishmen," said he; "and yet, sacred Heaven! you prey
upon your countrymen as if you were very Normans. You should be my
neighbours, and, if so, my friends; for which of my English neighbours
have reason to be otherwise? I tell ye, yeomen, that even those among ye
who have been branded with outlawry have had from me protection; for I
have pitied their miseries, and curst the oppression of their tyrannic
nobles. What, then, would you have of me? or in what can this violence
serve ye?--Ye are worse than brute beasts in your actions, and will you
imitate them in their very dumbness?"