If,
therefore, Edward Waverley yawned at times over the dry deduction of his
line of ancestors, with their various intermarriages, and inwardly
deprecated the remorseless and protracted accuracy with which the worthy
Sir Everard rehearsed the various degrees of propinquity between the
house of Waverley-Honour and the doughty barons, knights, and squires to
whom they stood allied; if (notwithstanding his obligations to the three
ermines passant) he sometimes cursed in his heart the jargon of heraldry,
its griffins, its moldwarps, its wyverns, and its dragons, with all the
bitterness of Hotspur himself, there were moments when these
communications interested his fancy and rewarded his attention.
The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and
perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return on the evening
when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her
from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which
the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighbouring
cloister that peace which passeth not away; [Footnote: See Note 2.]--to
these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his
eye glistened.
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