Now, as the repeal of the outlawry would
involve the restitution of the estates to the rightful owner,
it was obvious that it could never be expected from that
most legitimate and most Christian king, Richard the First
of England, the arch-crusader and anti-jacobin by excellence,--
the very type, flower, cream, pink, symbol, and mirror
of all the Holy Alliances that have ever existed on earth,
excepting that he seasoned his superstition and love
of conquest with a certain condiment of romantic generosity
and chivalrous self-devotion, with which his imitators
in all other points have found it convenient to dispense.
To give freely to one man what he had taken forcibly from another,
was generosity of which he was very capable; but to restore
what he had taken to the man from whom he had taken it,
was something that wore too much of the cool physiognomy
of justice to be easily reconcileable to his kingly feelings.
He had, besides, not only sent all King Henry's saints
about their business, or rather about their no-business--
their faineantise--but he had laid them under rigorous
contribution for the purposes of his holy war; and having
made them refund to the piety of the successor what they had
extracted from the piety of the precursor, he compelled them,
in addition, to give him their blessing for nothing.
Matilda, therefore, from all these circumstances, felt little
hope that her lover would be any thing but an outlaw for life.
Pages:
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84