&c. &c.: all which talk would not have
interested little Davids, had it come from anybody else's mouth, but to
which he never tired of listening as it fell from her sweet lips.
So, in fact, when old Isaac of York came to negotiate with Don Beltran
de Cuchilla for the ransom of the Alfaqui's daughter of Xixona, our
dearest Rebecca was no more dead than you and I; and it was in his rage
and fury against Ivanhoe that Isaac told that cavalier the falsehood
which caused the knight so much pain and such a prodigious deal of
bloodshed to the Moors: and who knows, trivial as it may seem, whether
it was not that very circumstance which caused the destruction in Spain
of the Moorish power?
Although Isaac, we may be sure, never told his daughter that Ivanhoe
had cast up again, yet Master Ben Davids did, who heard it from his
employer; and he saved Rebecca's life by communicating the intelligence,
for the poor thing would have infallibly perished but for this good
news. She had now been in prison four years three months and twenty-four
days, during which time she had partaken of nothing but bread and water
(except such occasional tit-bits as Davids could bring her--and these
were few indeed; for old Isaac was always a curmudgeon, and seldom had
more than a pair of eggs for his own and Davids' dinner); and she was
languishing away, when the news came suddenly to revive her.
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