In this humour of passive resistance, and with his garment collected
beneath him to keep his limbs from the wet pavement, Isaac sat in a
corner of his dungeon, where his folded hands, his dishevelled hair and
beard, his furred cloak and high cap, seen by the wiry and broken light,
would have afforded a study for Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter
existed at the period. The Jew remained, without altering his position,
for nearly three hours, at the expiry of which steps were heard on the
dungeon stair. The bolts screamed as they were withdrawn--the hinges
creaked as the wicket opened, and Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, followed by
the two Saracen slaves of the Templar, entered the prison.
Front-de-Boeuf, a tall and strong man, whose life had been spent in
public war or in private feuds and broils, and who had hesitated at no
means of extending his feudal power, had features corresponding to his
character, and which strongly expressed the fiercer and more malignant
passions of the mind. The scars with which his visage was seamed,
would, on features of a different cast, have excited the sympathy and
veneration due to the marks of honourable valour; but, in the peculiar
case of Front-de-Boeuf, they only added to the ferocity of his
countenance, and to the dread which his presence inspired. This
formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his
body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armour. He
had no weapon, excepting a poniard at his belt, which served to
counterbalance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that hung at his
right side.
The black slaves who attended Front-de-Boeuf were stripped of their
gorgeous apparel, and attired in jerkins and trowsers of coarse linen,
their sleeves being tucked up above the elbow, like those of butchers
when about to exercise their function in the slaughter-house. Each had
in his hand a small pannier; and, when they entered the dungeon, they
stopt at the door until Front-de-Boeuf himself carefully locked and
double-locked it. Having taken this precaution, he advanced slowly up
the apartment towards the Jew, upon whom he kept his eye fixed, as if
he wished to paralyze him with his glance, as some animals are said to
fascinate their prey. It seemed indeed as if the sullen and malignant
eye of Front-de-Boeuf possessed some portion of that supposed power over
his unfortunate prisoner. The Jew sat with his mouth agape, and his
eyes fixed on the savage baron with such earnestness of terror, that his
frame seemed literally to shrink together, and to diminish in size while
encountering the fierce Norman's fixed and baleful gaze. The unhappy
Isaac was deprived not only of the power of rising to make the obeisance
which his terror dictated, but he could not even doff his cap, or utter
any word of supplication; so strongly was he agitated by the conviction
that tortures and death were impending over him.