Ivanhoe - Penn State University

pay for walking on Watling-street, without having fifty men
at my back?”
“Were it not well,” said the Lieutenant of the gang apart to
the Captain, “that the Prior should name the Jew’s ransom,
and the Jew name the Prior’s?”
“Thou art a mad knave,” said the Captain, “but thy plan
transcends!—Here, Jew, step forth—Look at that holy Father
Aymer, Prior of the rich Abbey of Jorvaulx, and tell us at
what ransom we should hold him?—Thou knowest the income
of his convent, I warrant thee.”
“O, assuredly,” said Isaac. “I have trafficked with the good
fathers, and bought wheat and barley, and fruits of the earth,
and also much wool. O, it is a rich abbey-stede, and they do
live upon the fat, and drink the sweet wines upon the lees,
these good fathers of Jorvaulx. Ah, if an outcast like me had
such a home to go to, and such incomings by the year and by
the month, I would pay much gold and silver to redeem my
captivity.”
“Hound of a Jew!” exclaimed the Prior, “no one knows better
than thy own cursed self, that our holy house of God is
indebted for the finishing of our chancel—”
Sir Walter Scott
315
“And for the storing of your cellars in the last season with
the due allowance of Gascon wine,” interrupted the Jew; “but
that—that is small matters.”
“Hear the infidel dog!” said the churchman; he jangles as if
our holy community did come under debts for the wines we
have a license to drink, propter necessitatem, et ad frigus
depellendum. The circumcised villain blasphemeth the holy
church, and Christian men listen and rebuke him not!”
“All this helps nothing,” said the leader. —“Isaac, pronounce
what be may pay, without flaying both hide and hair.”
“An six hundred crowns,” said Isaac, “the good Prior might
well pay to your honoured valours, and never sit less soft in
his stall.”
“Six hundred crowns,” said the leader, gravely; “I am contented—thou
hast well spoken, Isaac—six hundred crowns.—
It is a sentence, Sir Prior.”
“A sentence!—a sentence!” exclaimed the band; “Solomon
had not done it better.”
“Thou hearest thy doom, Prior,” said the leader.
“Ye are mad, my masters,” said the Prior; “where am I to
find such a sum? If I sell the very pyx and candlesticks on the