, 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 changing 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 bushy 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; a