Bois-Guilbert

Brian de, bre-an de bwa-gil-ber', a preceptor of the order of Templars in Scott's Ivanhoe. He is a powerful, ambitious, passionate man, hard and cruel, the villain of the story. Scott draws a striking picture of Bois-Guilbert:

A man past forty, thin, strong, tall, and muscular; an athletic figure, which long fatigue and constant exercise seemed to have left none of the softer part of the human form, having reduced the whole to brawn, bones, and sinews, which had sustained a thousand toils, and were ready to dare a thousand more.... His keen, piercing dark eyes, told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued and dangers dared, and seemed to challenge opposition to his wishes, for the pleasure of sweeping it from his road by a determined exertion of courage and of will.

He is the unsuccessful suitor of Rebecca, the beautiful Jewess. Disguised as an outlaw he makes her his captive. When she is condemned to die as a sorceress he pleads with her to flee with him, but is repulsed. In the tournament at Ashby he enters the lists against Ivanhoe, Rebecca's champion, but falls dead at the beginning of the combat. "Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions." See Ivanhoe