20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

In a word, she was always flinging Rebecca into Ivanhoe’s teeth. There was not a day in his life but that unhappy warrior was made to remember that a Hebrew damsel had been in love with him, and that a Christian lady of fashion could never forgive the insult. For instance, if Gurth, the swineherd, who was now promoted to be a gamekeeper and verderer, brought the account of a famous wild-boar in the wood, and proposed a hunt, Rowena would say, ‘Do, Sir Wilfrid, persecute these poor pigs: you know your friends the Jews can’t abide them! Or when, as it oft would happen, our lionhearted monarch, Richard, in order to get a loan or a benevolence from the Jews, would roast a few of the Hebrew capitalists, or extract some of the principal rabbis’[751] teeth, Rowena would exult and say, ‘Serve them right, the misbehaving wretches! England can never be a happy country until every one of these monsters is exterminated! – or else, adopting a strain of still more savage sarcasm, would exclaim, ‘Ivanhoe my dear, more persecution for the Jews! Hadn’t you better interfere, my love? His Majesty will do anything for you; and, you know, the Jews were always such favorites of yours,’ or words to that effect. But, nevertheless, her ladyship never lost an opportunity of wearing Rebecca’s jewels at court, whenever the Queen held a drawing-room; or at the York assizes and ball, when she appeared there: not of course because she took any interest in such things, but because she considered it her duty to attend, as one of the chief ladies of the county.

Thus Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, having attained the height of his wishes, was, like many a man when he has reached that dangerous elevation, disappointed. Ah, dear friends, it is but too often so in life! Many a garden, seen from a distance, looks fresh and green, which, when beheld closely, is dismal and weedy; the shady walks melancholy and grass-grown; the bowers you would fain repose in, cushioned with stinging-nettles. I have ridden in a caique upon the waters of the Bosphorus[752], and looked upon the capital of the Soldan of Turkey. As seen from those blue waters, with palace and pinnacle, with gilded dome and lowering cypress, it seemeth a very Paradise of Mahound: but, enter the city, and it is but a beggarly labyrinth of rickety huts and dirty alleys, where the ways are steep and the smells are foul, tenanted by mangy dogs and ragged beggars – a dismal illusion! Life is such, ah, well-a-day! It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

Perhaps a man with Ivanhoe’s high principles would never bring himself to acknowledge this fact; but others did for him. He grew thin, and pined away as much as if he had been in a fever under the scorching sun of Ascalon[753]. He had no appetite for his meals; he slept ill, though he was yawning all day. The jangling of the doctors and friars whom Rowena brought together did not in the least enliven him, and he would sometimes give proofs of somnolency during their disputes, greatly to the consternation of his lady. He hunted a good deal, and, I very much fear, as Rowena rightly remarked, that he might have an excuse for being absent from home. He began to like wine, too, who had been as sober as a hermit; and when he came back from Athelstane’s (whither he would repair not unfrequently), the unsteadiness of his gait and the unnatural brilliancy of his eye were remarked by his lady: who, you may be sure, was sitting up for him. As for Athelstane, he swore by St. Wullstan that he was glad to have escaped a marriage with such a pattern of propriety; and honest Cedric the Saxon (who had been very speedily driven out of his daughter-in-law’s castle) vowed by St. Waltheof that his son had bought a dear bargain.

So Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe became almost as tired of England as his royal master Richard was, (who always quitted the country when he had squeezed from his loyal nobles, commons, clergy, and Jews, all the money which he could get,) and when the lionhearted Prince began to make war against the French King, in Normandy[754] and Guienne[755], Sir Wilfrid pined like a true servant to be in company of the good champion, alongside of whom he had shivered so many lances, and dealt such woundy blows of sword and battle-axe on the plains of Jaffa[756] or the breaches of Acre[757]. Travellers were welcome at Rotherwood that brought news from the camp of the good King: and I warrant me that the knight listened with all his might when Father Drono, the chaplain, read in the St. James’s Chronykyll (which was the paper of news he of Ivanhoe took in) of ‘another glorious triumph’ – ‘Defeat of the French near Blois[758]’ – ‘Splendid victory at Epte[759], and narrow escape of the French King:’ the which deeds of arms the learned scribes had to narrate.