[Burlesques by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link bookBurlesques CHAPTER VI 2/10
Whenever he so ransomed or benefited one of this religion, he would moreover give them a little token or a message (were the good knight out of money), saying, "Take this token, and remember this deed was done by Wilfrid the Disinherited, for the services whilome rendered to him by Rebecca, the daughter of Isaac of York!" So among themselves, and in their meetings and synagogues, and in their restless travels from land to land, when they of Jewry cursed and reviled all Christians, as such abominable heathens will, they nevertheless excepted the name of the Desdichado, or the doubly-disinherited as he now was, the Desdichado-Doblado. The account of all the battles, storms, and scaladoes in which Sir Wilfrid took part, would only weary the reader; for the chopping off one heathen's head with an axe must be very like the decapitation of any other unbeliever.
Suffice it to say, that wherever this kind of work was to be done, and Sir Wilfrid was in the way, he was the man to perform it.
It would astonish you were you to see the account that Wamba kept of his master's achievements, and of the Bulgarians, Bohemians, Croatians, slain or maimed by his hand.
And as, in those days, a reputation for valor had an immense effect upon the soft hearts of women, and even the ugliest man, were he a stout warrior, was looked upon with favor by Beauty: so Ivanhoe, who was by no means ill-favored, though now becoming rather elderly, made conquests over female breasts as well as over Saracens, and had more than one direct offer of marriage made to him by princesses, countesses, and noble ladies possessing both charms and money, which they were anxious to place at the disposal of a champion so renowned.
It is related that the Duchess Regent of Kartoffelberg offered him her hand, and the ducal crown of Kartoffelberg, which he had rescued from the unbelieving Prussians; but Ivanhoe evaded the Duchess's offer, by riding away from her capital secretly at midnight and hiding himself in a convent of Knights Hospitallers on the borders of Poland.
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