My dear readers, you
may settle the matter among yourselves as you like. If you wish to kill
the characters really off, let them be dead, and have done with them:
but, entre nous, I don't believe they are any more dead than you or I
are, and sometimes doubt whether there is a single syllable of truth in
this whole story.
Well, Ivanhoe was taken to the hermits' cell, and there doctored by the
holy fathers for his hurts; which were of such a severe and dangerous
order, that he was under medical treatment for a very considerable time.
When he woke up from his delirium, and asked how long he had been ill,
fancy his astonishment when he heard that he had been in the fever for
six years! He thought the reverend fathers were joking at first, but
their profession forbade them from that sort of levity; and besides,
he could not possibly have got well any sooner, because the story would
have been sadly put out had he appeared earlier. And it proves how good
the fathers were to him, and how very nearly that scoundrel of a Roger
de Backbite's dagger had finished him, that he did not get well under
this great length of time; during the whole of which the fathers tended
him without ever thinking of a fee. I know of a kind physician in this
town who does as much sometimes; but I won't do him the ill service of
mentioning his name here.
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