e me to
myself--the step between time and eternity is short but terrible, and I
have few moments to prepare for it."

"I perceive, Rebecca," said Bois-Guilbert, "that thou dost continue to
burden me with the charge of distresses, which most fain would I have
prevented."

"Sir Knight," said Rebecca, "I would avoid reproaches--But what is more
certain than that I owe my death to thine unbridled passion?"

"You err--you err,"--said the Templar, hastily, "if you impute what
I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.--Could I
guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some flashes of frantic
valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments
of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above
common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our Order, who think
and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the
grounds of his opinions and actions?"

"Yet," said Rebecca, "you sate a judge upon me, innocent--most
innocent--as you knew me to be--you concurred in my condemnation, and,
if I aright understood, are yourself to appear in arms to assert my
guilt, and assure my punishment."

"Thy patience, maiden," replied the Templar. "No race knows so well as
thine own tribes how to submit to the time, and so to trim their bark as
to make advantage even of an adverse wind."

"Lamented be the hour," said Rebecca, "that has taught such art to
the House of Israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire bends the
stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own governors, and
the denizens of their own free independent state, must crouch before
strangers. It is our curse, Sir Knight, deserved, doubtless, by our own
misdeeds and those of our fathers; but you--you who boast your freedom
as your birthright, how much deeper is your disgrace when you stoop to
soothe the prejudices of others, and that against your own conviction?"

"Your words are bitter, Rebecca," said Bois-Guilbert, pacing the
apartment with impatience, "but I came not hither to bandy reproaches
with you.--Know that Bois-Guilbert yields not to created man, although
circumstances may for a time induce him to alter his plan. His will is
the mountain stream, which may indeed be turned for a little space aside
by the rock, but fails not to find its course to the ocean. That scroll
which warned thee to demand a champion, from whom couldst thou think it
came, if not from Bois-Guilbert?