20 лучших повестей на английском / 20 Best Short Novels

I just throw this off by way of description, and to show what might be done if I chose to indulge in this style of composition; but as in the battles which are described by the kindly chronicler, of one of whose works this present masterpiece is professedly a continuation, everything passes off agreeably – the people are slain, but without any unpleasant sensation to the reader; nay, some of the most savage and bloodstained characters of history, such is the indomitable good-humor of the great novelist, become amiable, jovial companions, for whom one has a hearty sympathy – so, if you please, we will have this fighting business at Chalus, and the garrison and honest Bertrand of Gourdon, disposed of; the former, according to the usage of the good old times, having been hung up or murdered to a man, and the latter killed in the manner described by the late Dr. Goldsmith[780] in his History.

As for the Lion-hearted, we all very well know that the shaft of Bertrand de Gourdon put an end to the royal hero and that from that 29th of March he never robbed nor murdered any more. And we have legends in recondite books of the manner of the King’s death.

‘You must die, my son,’ said the venerable Walter of Rouen, as Berengaria was carried shrieking from the King’s tent. ‘Repent, Sir King, and separate yourself from your children!’

‘It is ill jesting with a dying man,’ replied the King. ‘Children have I none, my good lord bishop, to inherit after me.’

‘Richard of England,’ said the archbishop, turning up his fine eyes, ‘your vices are your children. Ambition is your eldest child, Cruelty is your second child, Luxury is your third child; and you have nourished them from your youth up. Separate yourself from these sinful ones, and prepare your soul, for the hour of departure draweth nigh.’

Violent, wicked, sinful, as he might have been, Richard of England met his death like a Christian man. Peace be to the soul of the brave! When the news came to King Philip of France[781], he sternly forbade his courtiers to rejoice at the death of his enemy. ‘It is no matter of joy but of dolor,’ he said, that the bulwark of Christendom and the bravest king of Europe is no more.’

Meanwhile what has become of Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, whom we left in the act of rescuing his sovereign by running the Count of Chalus through the body?

As the good knight stooped down to pick his sword out of the corpse of his fallen foe, some one coming behind him suddenly thrust a dagger into his back at a place where his shirt-of-mail was open (for Sir Wilfrid had armed that morning in a hurry, and it was his breast, not his back, that he was accustomed ordinarily to protect); and when poor Wamba came up on the rampart, which he did when the fighting was over, being such a fool that he could not be got to thrust his head into danger for glory’s sake – he found his dear knight with the dagger in his back lying without life upon the body of the Count de Chalus whom he had anon slain.

Ah, what a howl poor Wamba set up when he found his master killed! How he lamented over the corpse of that noble knight and friend! What mattered it to him that Richard the King was borne wounded to his tent, and that Bertrand de Gourdon was flayed alive? At another time the sight of this spectacle might have amused the simple knave; but now all his thoughts were of his lord: so good, so gentle, so kind, so loyal, so frank with the great, so tender to the poor, so truthful of speech, so modest regarding his own merit, so true a gentleman, in a word, that anybody might, with reason, deplore him.

As Wamba opened the dear knight’s corselet, he found a locket round his neck, in which there was some hair; not flaxen like that of my Lady Rowena, who was almost as fair as an Albino, but as black, Wamba, thought, as the locks of the Jewish maiden whom the knight had rescued in the lists of Templestowe. A bit of Rowena’s hair was in Sir Wilfrid’s possession, too; but that was in his purse along with his seal of arms, and a couple of groats: for the good knight never kept any money, so generous was he of his largesses when money came in.

Wamba took the purse, and seal, and groats, but he left the locket of hair, round his master’s neck, and when he returned to England never said a word about the circumstance. After all, how should he know whose hair it was? It might have been the knight’s grandmother’s hair for aught the fool knew; so he kept his counsel when he brought back the sad news and tokens to the disconsolate widow at Rotherwood.