In this humour of passive resistance, and with his garment collected

beneath him to keep his limbs from the wet pavement, Isaac sat in a

corner of his dungeon, where his folded hands, his dishevelled hair and

beard, his furred cloak and high cap, seen by the wiry and broken light,

would have afforded a study for Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter

existed at the period. The Jew remained, without altering his position,

for nearly three hours, at the expiry of which steps were heard on the

dungeon stair. The bolts screamed as they were withdrawn--the hinges

creaked as the wicket opened, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, followed by

the two Saracen slaves of the Templar, entered the prison.

Front-de-Boeuf, a tall and strong man, whose life had been spent in

public war or in private feuds and broils, and who had hesitated at no

means of extending his feudal power, had features corresponding to his

character, and which strongly expressed the fiercer and more malignant

passions of the mind. The scars with which his visage was seamed,

would, on features of a different cast, have excited the sympathy and

veneration due to the marks of honourable valour; but, in the peculiar

case of Front-de-Boeuf, they only added to the ferocity of his

countenance, and to the dread which his presence inspired. This

formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his

body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armour. He

had no weapon, excepting a poniard at his belt, which served to

counterbalance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that hung at his

right side.

The black slaves who attended Front-de-Boeuf were stripped of their

gorgeous apparel, and attired in jerkins and trowsers of coarse linen,

their sleeves being tucked up above the elbow, like those of butchers

when about to exercise their function in the slaughter-house. Each had

in his hand a small pannier; and, when they entered the dungeon, they

stopt at the door until Front-de-Boeuf himself carefully locked and

double-locked it. Having taken this precaution, he advanced slowly up

the apartment towards the Jew, upon whom he kept his eye fixed, as if

he wished to paralyze him with his glance, as some animals are said to

fascinate their prey. It seemed indeed as if the sullen and malignant

eye of Front-de-Boeuf possessed some portion of that supposed power over

his unfortunate prisoner. The Jew sat with his mouth agape, and his

eyes fixed on the savage baron with such earnestness of terror, that his

frame seemed literally to shrink together, and to diminish in size while

encountering the fierce Norman's fixed and baleful gaze. The unhappy

Isaac was deprived not only of the power of rising to make the obeisance

which his terror dictated, but he could not even doff his cap, or utter

any word of supplication; so strongly was he agitated by the conviction

that tortures and death were impending over him.




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