girl.
The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the crowds poured. They
swarmed about the English bastilles like an invasion of ants, but
noisier than those creatures, and carried off the artillery and stores,
then turned all those dozen fortresses into monster bonfires,
imitation volcanoes whose lofty columns of thick smoke seemed
supporting the arch of the sky.
The delight of the children took another form. To some of the
younger ones seven months was a sort of lifetime. They had
forgotten what grass was like, and the velvety green meadows
seemed paradise to their surprised and happy eyes after the long
habit of seeing nothing but dirty lanes and streets. It was a wonder
to them–those spacious reaches of open country to run and dance
and tumble and frolic in, after their dull and joyless captivity; so
they scampered far and wide over the fair regions on both sides of
the river, and came back at eventide weary, but laden with flowers
and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh country air and
the vigorous exercise.
After the burnings, the grown folk followed Joan from church to
church and put in the day in thanksgivings for the city’s
deliverance, and at night they f€ted her and her generals and
illuminated the town, and high and low gave themselves up to
festivities and rejoicings. By the time the populace were fairly in
bed, toward dawn, we wer ein the saddle and away toward Tours
to report to the King.
That was a march which would have turned any one’s head but
Joan’s. We moved between emotional ranks of grateful
country-people all the way. They crowded about Joan to touch her
feet, her horse, her armor, and they even knelt in the road and
kissed her horse’s hoof-prints.
The land was full of her praises. The most illustrious cheifs of the
church wrote to the King extolling the Maid, comparing her to the
saints and heroes of the Bible, and warning him not to let
“unbelief, ingratitude, or other injustice” hinder or impair the
divine help sent through her. One might think there was a touch of
prophecy in that, and we will let it go at that; but to my mind it had
its inspiration in those great men’s accurate knowledge of the
King’s trivial and treacherous character.
The King had come to Tours to meet Joan. At the present day this
poor thing is called Charles the Victorious, on account of victories
which other people won for him, but in our time we had a private
name for him which described him better, and was sanctified to
him by personal deserving–Charles the Base. When we entered the
presence he sat throned, with his tinseled snobs and dandies
around him. He looked like a forked carrot, so tightly did his
clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore shoes with a
rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up to the
knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape
that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt
thing like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up
like a pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush
of stiff hair stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the
bottom, so that the cap and the hair together made the head like a
shuttlecock. All the materials of his dress were rich, and all the
colors brilliant. In his lap he cuddled a miniature greyhound that
snarled, lifting its lip and showing its white teeth whenever any
slight movement disturbed it. The King’s dandies were dressed in
about the same fashion as himself, and when I remembered that
Joan had called the war-council of Orleans “disguised ladies’
maids,” it reminded me of people who squander all their money on
a trifle and then haven’t anything to invest when they come across
a better chance; that name ought to have been saved for these
creatures.
Joan fell on her knees before the majesty of France, and the other
frivolous animal in his lap–a sight which it pained me to see.