To describe his deeds, would, I say, be tedious; one day's battle was
like that of another. I am not writing in ten volumes like Monsieur
Alexandre Dumas, or even in three like other great authors. We have no
room for the recounting of Sir Wilfrid's deeds of valor. Whenever he
took a Moorish town, it was remarked, that he went anxiously into the
Jewish quarter, and inquired amongst the Hebrews, who were in great
numbers in Spain, for Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac. Many Jews,
according to his wont, he ransomed, and created so much scandal by this
proceeding, and by the manifest favor which he showed to the people of
that nation, that the Master of Saint Jago remonstrated with him, and
it is probable he would have been cast into the Inquisition and
roasted, but that his prodigious valor and success against the Moors
counterbalanced his heretical partiality for the children of Jacob.
It chanced that the good knight was present at the siege of Xixona
in Andalusia, entering the breach first, according to his wont, and
slaying, with his own hand, the Moorish lieutenant of the town, and
several hundred more of its unbelieving defenders. He had very nearly
done for the Alfaqui, or governor--a veteran warrior with a crooked
scimitar and a beard as white as snow--but a couple of hundred of the
Alfaqui's bodyguard flung themselves between Ivanhoe and their chief,
and the old fellow escaped with his life, leaving a handful of his beard
in the grasp of the English knight.
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