By the body of St Mark, my prince of supplies, with his lovely Jewess, shall have a place in the gallery!--What is she, Isaac?
Thy wife or thy daughter, that Eastern houri that thou lockest under thy arm as thou wouldst thy treasure-casket ?" "My daughter Rebecca, so please your Grace," answered Isaac, with a low congee, nothing embarrassed by the Prince's salutation, in which, however, there was at least as much mockery as courtesy.
"The wiser man thou," said John, with a peal of laughter, in which his gay followers obsequiously joined.

"But, daughter or wife, she should be preferred according to her beauty and thy merits .-- Who sits above there ?" he continued, bending his eye on the gallery.

"Saxon churls, lolling at their lazy length!--out upon them!--let them sit close, and make room for my prince of usurers and his lovely daughter.

I'll make the hinds know they must share the high places of the synagogue with those whom the synagogue properly belongs to." Those who occupied the gallery to whom this injurious and unpolite speech was addressed, were the family of Cedric the Saxon, with that of his ally and kinsman, Athelstane of Coningsburgh, a personage, who, on account of his descent from the last Saxon monarchs of England, was held in the highest respect by all the Saxon natives of the north of England.
But with the blood of this ancient royal race, many of their infirmities had descended to Athelstane.

He was comely in countenance, bulky and strong in person, and in the flower of his age--yet inanimate in expression, dull-eyed, heavy-browed, inactive and sluggish in all his motions, and so slow in resolution, that the soubriquet of one of his ancestors was conferred upon him, and he was very generally called Athelstane the Unready.