LITMIR.BIZ

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She did her work quickly and with decision and despatch, and soon turned the panic flight into a quite steady-going march. You will grant that for so young a person, and a girl at that, this was a good piece of work.

      She was sixteen now, shapely and graceful, and of a beauty so extraordinary that I might allow myself any extravagance of language in describing it and yet have no fear of going beyond the truth. There was in her face a sweetness and serenity and purity that justly reflected her spiritual nature. She was deeply religious, and this is a thing which sometimes gives a melancholy cast to a person’s countenance, but it was not so in her case. Her religion made her inwardly content and joyous; and if she was troubled at times, and showed the pain of it in her face and bearing, it came of distress for her country; no part of it was chargeable to her religion.

      A considerable part of our village was destroyed, and when it became safe for us to venture back there we realized what other people had been suffering in all the various quarters of France for many years — yes, decades of years. For the first time we saw wrecked and smoke-blackened homes, and in the lanes and alleys carcasses of dumb creatures that had been slaughtered in pure wantonness — among them calves and lambs that had been pets of the children; and it was pity to see the children lament over them.

      And then, the taxes, the taxes! Everybody thought of that. That burden would fall heavy now in the commune’s crippled condition, and all faces grew long with the thought of it. Joan said:

      “Paying taxes with naught to pay them with is what the rest of France has been doing these many years, but we never knew the bitterness of that before. We shall know it now.”

      And so she went on talking about it and growing more and more troubled about it, until one could see that it was filling all her mind.

      At last we came upon a dreadful object. It was the madman — hacked and stabbed to death in his iron cage in the corner of the square. It was a bloody and dreadful sight. Hardly any of us young people had ever seen a man before who had lost his life by violence; so this cadaver had an awful fascination for us; we could not take our eyes from it. I mean, it had that sort of fascination for all of us but one. That one was Joan. She turned away in horror, and could not be persuaded to go near it again. There — it is a striking reminder that we are but creatures of use and custom; yes, and it is a reminder, too, of how harshly and unfairly fate deals with us sometimes. For it was so ordered that the very ones among us who were most fascinated with mutilated and bloody death were to live their lives in peace, while that other, who had a native and deep horror of it, must presently go forth and have it as a familiar spectacle every day on the field of battle.

      You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since the raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that had really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants may have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous occurrences that had filtered from the world’s history dimly into their minds, the truth is that they hadn’t. One biting little fact, visible to their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became at once more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the world’s history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It amuses me now when I recall how our elders talked then. They fumed and fretted in a fine fashion.

      “Ah, yes,” said old Jacques d’Arc, “things are come to a pretty pass, indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business.” He meant our young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII.

      “You say well,” said the maire. “He should be informed, and that at once. It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are not safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made known, indeed it shall — all France shall hear of it!”

      To hear them talk, one would have imagined that all the previous ten thousand sackings and burnings in France had been but fables, and this one the only fact. It is always the way; words will answer as long as it is only a person’s neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something.

      The big event filled us young people with talk, too. We let it flow in a steady stream while we tended the flocks. We were beginning to feel pretty important now, for I was eighteen and the other youths were from one to four years older — young men, in fact. One day the Paladin was arrogantly criticizing the patriot generals of France and said:

      “Look at Dunois, Bastard of Orleans — call him a general! Just put me in his place once — never mind what I would do, it is not for me to say, I have no stomach for talk, my way is to act and let others do the talking — but just put me in his place once, that’s all! And look at Saintrailles — pooh! and that blustering La Hire, now what a general that is!”

      It shocked everybody to hear these great names so flippantly handled, for to us these renowned soldiers were almost gods. In their far-off splendor they rose upon our imaginations dim and huge, shadowy and awful, and it was a fearful thing to hear them spoken of as if they were mere men, and their acts open to comment and criticism. The color rose in Joan’s face, and she said:

      “I know not how any can be so hardy as to use such words regarding these sublime men, who are the very pillars of the French state, supporting it with their strength and preserving it at daily cost of their blood. As for me, I could count myself honored past all deserving if I might be allowed but the privilege of looking upon them once — at a distance, I mean, for it would not become one of my degree to approach them too near.”

      The Paladin was disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around him that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled his complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan’s brother Jean said:

      “If you don’t like what our generals do, why don’t you go to the great wars yourself and better their work? You are always talking about going to the wars, but you don’t go.”

      “Look you,” said the Paladin, “it is easy to say that. Now I will tell you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one moment. I can save France — ah, you may laugh, but I know what is in me, I know what is hid under this peasant cap. I can save France, and I stand ready to do it, but not under these present conditions. If they want me, let them send for me; otherwise, let them take the consequences; I shall not budge but as an officer.”

      “Alas, poor France — France is lost!” said Pierre d’Arc.

      “Since you sniff so at others, why don’t you go to the wars yourself, Pierre d’Arc?”

      “Oh, I haven’t been sent for, either. I am no more a gentleman than you. Yet I will go; I promise to go. I promise to go as a private under your orders — when you are sent for.”

      They all laughed, and the Dragon-fly said:

      “So soon? Then you need to begin to get ready; you might be called for in five years — who knows? Yes, in my opinion you’ll march for the wars in five years.”

      “He will go sooner,” said Joan. She said it in a low voice and musingly, but several heard it.

      “How do you know that, Joan?” said the Dragon-fly, with a surprised look. But Jean d’Arc broke in and said:

      “I want to go myself, but as I am rather young yet, I also will wait, and march when the Paladin is sent for.”

      “No,” said Joan, “he will go with Pierre.”

      She said it as one who talks to himself aloud without knowing it, and none heard it but me. I glanced at her and saw that her knitting-needles were idle in her hands, and that her face had a dreamy and absent look in it. There were fleeting movements of her lips as if she might be occasionally saying parts of sentences

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