20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

One evening – it was the evening of the 27th March, 1199, indeed – his Majesty, who was in the musical mood, treated the court with a quantity of his so-called composition, until the people were fairly tired of clapping with their hands and laughing in their sleeves. First he sang an original air and poem, beginning

Cherries nice, cherries nice, nice, come choose,
Fresh and fair ones, who’ll refuse?’ &c.

The which he was ready to take his affidavit he had composed the day before yesterday. Then he sang an equally original heroic melody, of which the chorus was

Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the sea,
For Britons never, never, never slaves shall be,’ &c.

The courtiers applauded this song as they did the other, all except Ivanhoe, who sat without clanging a muscle of his features, until the King questioned him, when the knight, with a bow said ‘he thought he had heard something very like the air and the words elsewhere.’ His Majesty scowled at him a savage glance from under his red bush eyebrows; but Ivanhoe had saved the royal life that day, and the King, therefore, with difficulty controlled his indignation.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘by St. Richard and St. George, but ye never heard this song, for I composed it this very afternoon as I took my bath after the melee. Did I not, Blondel?’

Blondel, of course, was ready to take an affidavit that his Majesty had done as he said, and the King, thrumming on his guitar with his great red fingers and thumbs, began to sing out of tune and as follows:

Commanders of the faithful

‘The Pope he is a happy man,
His Palace is the Vatican,
And there he sits and drains his can:
The Pope he is a happy man.
I often say when I’m at home,
I’d like to be the Pope of Rome.

‘And then there’s Sultan Saladin,

That Turkish Soldan full of sin;
He has a hundred wives at least,
By which his pleasure is increased:
I’ve often wished, I hope no sin,
That I were Sultan Saladin.

‘But no, the Pope no wife may choose,

And so I would not wear his shoes;
No wine may drink the proud Paynim,
And so I’d rather not be him:
My wife, my wine, I love I hope,
And would be neither Turk nor Pope.’

Encore! Encore! Bravo! Bis! Everybody applauded the King’s song with all his might: everybody except Ivanhoe, who preserved his abominable gravity; and when asked aloud by Roger de Backbite whether he had heard that too, said firmly, ‘Yes, Roger de Backbite; and so hast thou if thou darest but tell the truth.’

‘Now, by St. Cicely, may I never touch gittern again,’ bawled the King in a fury, ‘if every note, word, and thought be not mine; may I die in to-morrow’s onslaught if the song be not my song. Sing thyself, Wilfrid of the Lanthorn Jaws; thou could’st sing a good song in old times.’ And with his might, and with a forced laugh, the King, who loved brutal practical jests, flung his guitar at the head of Ivanhoe.

Sir Wilfrid caught it gracefully with one hand, and making an elegant bow to the sovereign, began to chant as follows:

King Canute