"
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.
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