In the anteroom he found his attendant Anwold, who, taking the torch from the hand of the waiting-maid, conducted him with more haste than ceremony to an exterior and ignoble part of the building, where a number of small apartments, or rather cells, served for sleeping places to the lower order of domestics, and to strangers of mean degree.
“In which of these sleeps the Jew?” said the Pilgrim.
“The unbelieving dog,” answered Anwold, “kennels in the cell next your holiness.— St. Dunstan, how it must be scraped and cleansed ere it be again fit for a Christian!”
“And where sleeps Gurth the swineherd?” said the stranger.
“Gurth,” replied the bondsman, “sleeps in the cell on your right, as the Jew on that to your left; you serve to keep the child of circumcision separate from the abomination of his tribe. You might have occupied a more honourable place had you accepted of Oswald’s invitation.”
“It is as well as it is,” said the Palmer; “the company, even of a Jew, can hardly spread contamination