That Athelstane was the man, I suppose no reader familiar with life, and novels which are a rescript of life, and are all strictly natural and edifying, can for a moment doubt. Cardinal Pandulfo tied the knot for them: and lest there should be any doubt about Ivanhoe's death (for his body was never sent home after all, nor seen after Wamba ran away from it), his Eminence procured a Papal decree annulling the former marriage, so that Rowena became Mrs. Athelstane with a clear conscience. And who shall be surprised, if she was happier with the stupid and boozy Thane than with the gentle and melancholy Wilfrid? Did women never have a predilection for fools, I should like to know; or fall in love with donkeys, before the time of the amours of Bottom and Titania? Ah! Mary, had you not preferred an ass to a man, would you have married Jack Bray, when a Michael Angelo offered? Ah! Fanny, were you not a woman, would you persist in adoring Tom Hiccups, who beats you, and comes home tipsy from the Club? Yes, Rowena cared a hundred times more about tipsy Athelstane than ever she had done for gentle Ivanhoe, and so great was her infatuation about the former, that she would sit upon his knee in the presence of all her maidens, and let him smoke his cigars in the very drawing-room. This is the epitaph she caused to be written by Father Drono (who piqued himself upon his Latinity) on the stone commemorating the death of her late lord:-- Hic est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus: Cum gladio et lancea, Normania et quoque Francia Verbera dura dabat: per Turcos multum equitabat: Guilbertum occidit: atque Hierosolyma vidit. Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa, Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani. And this is the translation which the doggerel knave Wamba made of the Latin lines: “REQUIESCAT. “Under the stone you behold, Buried, and coffined, and cold, Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold. “Always he marched in advance, Warring in Flanders and France, Doughty with sword and with lance. “Famous in Saracen fight, Rode in his youth the good knight, Scattering Paynims in flight. “Brian the Templar untrue, Fairly in tourney he slew, Saw Hierusalem too. “Now he is buried and gone, Lying beneath the gray stone: Where shall you find such a one? “Long time his widow deplored, Weeping the fate of her lord, Sadly cut off by the sword. “When she was eased of her pain, Came the good Lord Athelstane, When her ladyship married again.” Athelstane burst into a loud laugh, when he heard it, at the last line, but Rowena would have had the fool whipped, had not the Thane interceded; and to him, she said, she could refuse nothing. CHAPTER IV. IVANHOE REDIVIVUS.