That Athelstane was the man, I suppose no reader familiar with life, and
novels which are a rescript of life, and are all strictly natural and
edifying, can for a moment doubt. Cardinal Pandulfo tied the knot for
them: and lest there should be any doubt about Ivanhoe's death (for his
body was never sent home after all, nor seen after Wamba ran away from
it), his Eminence procured a Papal decree annulling the former marriage,
so that Rowena became Mrs. Athelstane with a clear conscience. And who
shall be surprised, if she was happier with the stupid and boozy Thane
than with the gentle and melancholy Wilfrid? Did women never have a
predilection for fools, I should like to know; or fall in love with
donkeys, before the time of the amours of Bottom and Titania? Ah! Mary,
had you not preferred an ass to a man, would you have married Jack Bray,
when a Michael Angelo offered? Ah! Fanny, were you not a woman, would
you persist in adoring Tom Hiccups, who beats you, and comes home
tipsy from the Club? Yes, Rowena cared a hundred times more about tipsy
Athelstane than ever she had done for gentle Ivanhoe, and so great was
her infatuation about the former, that she would sit upon his knee in
the presence of all her maidens, and let him smoke his cigars in the
very drawing-room.
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