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"Well, thou hast given him leave to keep the hound, so there is an end of it. But to this piece of learned heathenness say'st thou the Scot met him in the desert?" "No, my liege, the Scot's tale runs thus: He was dispatched to the old hermit of Engaddi " "'Sdeath and hell!" said Richard, starting up, "by whom dispatched, and for what?
I think it is scarce known in the camp that your royal consort is on a pilgrimage; and even the princes may not have been aware, as the Queen has been sequestered from company since your love prohibited her attendance in case of infection." "Well, it shall be looked into," said Richard. "So this Scottish man, this envoy, met with a wandering physician at the grotto of Engaddi ha?"
Be pleased, therefore, to know my charge was to propose, through the medium of the hermit of Engaddi a holy man, respected and protected by Saladin himself " "A continuation of the truce, I doubt not," said Richard, hastily interrupting him. "No, by Saint Andrew, my liege," said the Scottish knight; "but the establishment of a lasting peace, and the withdrawing our armies from Palestine."
"Ask himself, if thou wilt not believe me," answered Sheerkohf; and ere the words had left his mouth, the hermit gave evidence in his own behalf. "I am Theodorick of Engaddi," he said "I am the walker of the desert I am friend of the Cross, and flail of all infidels, heretics, and devil-worshippers. Avoid ye, avoid ye! Down with Mahound, Termagaunt, and all their adherents!"
"They were not entrusted to me, my lord," said Sir Kenneth. "I delivered them sealed to the hermit. Might I so far presume, my lord king, this discourse but heats your disease, the enemy from which Christendom dreads more evil than from armed hosts of infidels." "You can flatter, Sir Knight," said the king, "but you escape me not. Saw you my royal consort at Engaddi?"
From the Jewish anchorites, who of old sought a retreat beneath the shade of the palms of Engaddi, who beguiled their weary hours in the chanting of psalms by the bitter waters of the Dead Sea; from the philosophic Hindu, who sought for happiness in bodily inaction and mental exercise, to these Christian solitaries, the stages of delusion are numerous and successive.
"This night," answered the Christian, "I must pass in prayer and penitence with a holy man, Theodorick of Engaddi, who dwells amongst these wilds, and spends his life in the service of God." "I will at least see you safe thither," said the Saracen.
"My lord," said the holy man, throwing back his cowl and upper vesture, and discovering under the latter a garment of goatskin, and from beneath the former a visage so wildly wasted by climate, fast, and penance, as to resemble rather the apparition of an animated skeleton than a human face, "for twenty years have I macerated this miserable body in the caverns of Engaddi, doing penance for a great crime.
"Not so my liege," replied De Vaux? "but he met, I think, near that place, with a Saracen Emir with whom he had some MELEE in the way of proof of valour, and finding him worthy to bear brave men company, they went together, as errant knights are wont, to the grotto of Engaddi." Here De Vaux stopped, for he was not one of those who can tell a long story in a sentence.
"Nay, then," said Richard, "if he loves not wine, that lightener of the human heart, his conversion is not to be hoped for, and the prediction of the mad priest of Engaddi goes like chaff down the wind."
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