, who kissed it with the utmost possible veneration. The swineherd
stood gazing after the travellers until they were lost under the boughs of the
forest path, when he was disturbed from his reverie by the voice of Wamba.
    »Knowest thou,« said the Jester, »my good friend Gurth, that thou art
strangely courteous and most unwontedly pious on this summer morning? I would I
were a black Prior or a barefoot Palmer, to avail myself of thy unwonted zeal
and courtesy - certes, I would make more out of it than a kiss of the hand.«
    »Thou art no fool thus far, Wamba,« answered Gurth, »though thou arguest
from appearances, and the wisest of us can do no more - But it is time to look
after my charge.«
    So saying, he turned back to the mansion, attended by the Jester.
    Meanwhile the travellers continued to press on their journey with a despatch
which argued the extremity of the Jew's fears, since persons at his age are
seldom fond of rapid motion. The Palmer, to whom every path and outlet in the
wood appeared to be familiar, led the way through the most devious paths, and
more than once excited anew the suspicion of the Israelite, that he intended to
betray him into some ambuscade of his enemies.
    His doubts might have been indeed pardoned; for, except perhaps the flying
fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who
were the object of such an unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution
as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences,
as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and
property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Saxon, Dane,
and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which
should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a
point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute.
The kings of the Norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their
example in all acts of tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a
persecution of a more regular, calculated, and self-interested kind. It is a
well-known story of King John, that he confined a wealthy Jew in one of the
royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the
jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large
sum, which it was the tyrant's object