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 The bolts screamed as they were withdrawn, the hinges creaked as the wicket opened, and Reginald Front-de-B?uf, followed by the two Saracen slaves of the Templar, entered the prison.
Front-de-B?uf, 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-B?uf, 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-B?uf 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-B?uf 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 paralyse 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-B?uf possessed some portion of that supposed power over his unfortunate prisoner. The Jew sate 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.
On the other hand, the stately form of the Norman appeared to dilate in magnitude, like that of the eagle, which ruffles up its plumage when about to pounce on its defenceless prey. He paused within three steps of the comer in which the unfortunate Jew had now, as it were, coiled himself up into the smallest possible space, and made a sign for one of the slaves to approach. The black satellite came forward accordingly, and, producing from his basket a large pair of scales and several weights, he laid them at the feet of Front-de-B?uf, and again retired to the respectful distance at which his companion had already taken his station.
The motions of these men were slow and solemn, as if there impended over their souls some preconception of horror and of cruelty. Front-de-B?uf himself opened the scene by thus addressing his ill-fated captive.
“Most accursed dog of an accursed race,” he said, awaking with his deep and sullen voice the sullen echoes of his dungeon-vault, “seest thou these scales?”
The unhappy Jew returned a feeble affirmative.
“In these very scales shalt thou weigh me out,” said the relentless Baron, “a thousand silver pounds, after the just measure and weight of the Tower of London.”
“Holy Abraham!” returned the Jew, finding voice through the very extremity of his danger, “heard man ever such a demand? Who ever heard, even in a minstrel’s tale, of such a sum as a thousand pounds of silver? What human sight was ever blessed with the vision of such a mass of treasure? Not within the walls of York, ransack my house and that of all my tribe, wilt thou find the tithe of that huge sum of silver that thou speakest of.”
“I am reasonable,” answered Front-de-B?uf, “and if silver be scant, I refuse not gold. At the rate of a mark of gold for each six pounds of silver, thou shalt free thy unbelieving carcass from such punishment as thy heart has never even conceived.”
“Have mercy on me, noble knight!” exclaimed Isaac; “I am old, and poor, and helpless. It were unworthy to triumph over me. It is a poor deed to crush a worm.”
“Old thou mayst be,” replied the knight; “more shame to their folly who have suffered thee to grow grey in usury and knavery. Feeble thou mayst be, for when had a Jew either heart or hand. But rich it is well known thou art.”
“I swear to you, noble knight,” said the Jew, “by all which I believe, and by all which we believe in common—”
“Perjure not thyself,” said the Norman, interrupting him, “and let not thine obstinacy seal thy doom, until thou hast seen and well considered the fate that awaits thee. Think not I speak to thee only to excite thy terror, and practise on the base cowardice thou hast derived from thy tribe. I swear to thee by that which thou dost NOT believe, by the Gospel which our church teaches, and by the keys which are given her to bind and to loose,2 that my purpose is deep and peremptory. This dungeon is no place for trifling. Prisoners ten thousand times more distinguished than thou have died within these walls, and their fate hath never been known! But for thee is reserved a long and lingering death, to which theirs were luxury.”
He again made a signal for the slaves to approach, and spoke to them apart, in their own language; for he also had been in Palestine, where, perhaps, he had learnt his lesson of cruelty. The Saracens produced from their baskets a quantity of charcoal, a pair of bellows, and a flask of oil. While the one struck a light with a flint and steel, the other disposed the charcoal in the large rusty grate which we have already mentioned, and exercised the bellows until the fuel came to a red glow.
“Seest thou, Isaac,” said Front-de-B?uf, “the range of iron bars above that glowing charcoal? 3 On that warm couch thou shalt lie, stripped of thy clothes as if thou wert to rest on a bed of down. One of these slaves shall maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy wretched limbs with oil, lest the roast should burn. Now, choose betwixt such a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds of silver; for, by the head of my father, thou hast no other option.”
“It is impossible,” exclaimed the miserable Jew—“it is impossible that your purpose can be real! The good God of nature never made a heart capable of exercising such cruelty!”
“Trust not to that, Isaac,” said Front-de-B?uf, “it were a fatal error. Dost thou think that I, who have seen a town sacked, in which thousands of my Christian countrymen perished by sword, by flood, and by fire, will blench from my purpose for the outcries or screams of one single wretched Jew? Or thinkest thou that these swarthy slaves, who have neither law, country, nor conscience, but their master’s will—who use the poison, or the stake, or the poniard, or the cord, at his slightest wink—thinkest thou that
“So may Abraham, Jacob, and all the fathers of our people assist me,” said Isaac, “I cannot make the choice, because I have not the means of satisfying your exorbitant demand!”
“Seize him and strip him, slaves,” said the knight, “and let the fathers of his race assist him if they can.”
The assistants, taking their directions more from the Baron’s eye and his hand than his tongue, once more stepped forward, laid hands on the unfortunate Isaac, plucked him up from the ground, and, holding him between them, waited the hard-hearted Baron’s farther signal. The unhappy Jew eyed their countenances and that of Front-de-B?uf, in hope of discovering some symptoms of relenting; but that of the Baron exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty; and the savage eyes of the Saracens, rolling gloomily under their dark brows, acquiring a yet more sinister expression by the whiteness of the circle which surrounds the pupil, evinced rather the secret pleasure which they expected from the approaching scene than any reluctance to be its directors or agents. The Jew then looked at the glowing furnace over which he was presently to be stretched, and seeing no chance of his tormentor’s relenting, his resolution gave way.
“I will pay,” he said, “the thousand pounds of silver. That is,” he added, after a moment’s pause, “I will pay it with the help of my brethren; for I must beg as a mendicant at the door of our synagogue ere I make up so unheard-of a sum. When and where must it be delivered?”
