“No, my lord,” replied Cedric, standing up, and placing on the table his untasted cup, “I yield not the name of son to the disobedient youth, who at once despises my commands, and relinquishes the manners and customs of his fathers.”
“’Tis impossible,” cried Prince John, with well-feigned astonishment, “that so gallant a knight should be an unworthy or disobedient son!”
“Yet, my lord,” answered Cedric, “so it is with this Wilfred. He left my homely dwelling to mingle with the gay nobility of your brother’s court, where he learned to do those tricks of horsemanship which you prize so highly. He left it contrary to my wish and command; and in the days of Alfred that would have been termed disobedience—ay, and a crime severely punishable.”
“Alas!” replied Prince John, with a deep sigh of affected sympathy, “since your son was a follower of my unhappy brother, it need not be enquired where or from whom he learned the lesson of filial disobedience.”
Thus spake Prince John, wilfully forgetting, that of all the sons of Henry the Second, though no one was free from the charge, he himself had been most distinguished for rebellion and ingratitude to his father.
“I think,” said he, after a moment’s pause, “that my brother proposed to confer upon his favourite the rich manor of Ivanhoe.”
“He did endow him with it,” answered Cedric; “nor is it my least quarrel with my son, that he stooped to hold, as a feudal vassal, the very domains which his fathers possessed in free and independent right.”
“We shall then have your willing sanction, good Cedric,” said Prince John, “to confer this fief upon a person whose dignity will not be diminished by holding land of the British crown.—Sir Reginald Front-de-Bœuf,” he said, turning towards that Baron, “I trust you will so keep the goodly Barony of Ivanhoe, that Sir Wilfred shall not incur his father’s farther displeasure by again entering upon that fief.”
“By St Anthony!” answered the black-brow’d giant, “I will consent that your highness shall hold me a Saxon, if either Cedric or Wilfred, or the best that ever bore English blood, shall wrench from me the gift with which your highness has graced me.”
“Whoever shall call thee Saxon, Sir Baron,” replied Cedric, offended at a mode of expression by which the Normans frequently expressed their habitual contempt of the English, “will do thee an honour as great as it is undeserved.”