Yes, one might say that her motto was “Work! stick to it; keep on
working!” for in war she never knew what indolence was. And
whoever will take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed.
There’s many a way to win in this world, but none of them is worth
much without good hard work back out of it.
I think we should have lost our big Standard-Bearer that day, if our
bigger Dwarf had not been at hand to bring him out of the m€l‚e
when he was wounded. He was unconscious, and would have been
trampled to death by our own horse, if the Dwarf had not promptly
rescued him and haled him to the rear and safety. He recovered,
and was himself again after two or three hours; and then he was
happy and proud, and made the most of his wound, and went
swaggering around in his bandages showing off like an innocent
big-child–which was just what he was. He was prouder of being
wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But
there was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he
was hit by a stone from a catapult–a stone the size of a man’s head.
But the stone grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was
claiming that the enemy had flung a building at him.
“Let him alone,” said No‰l Rainguesson. “Don’t interrupt his
processes. To-morrow it will be a cathedral.”
He said that privately. And, sure enough, to-morrow it was a
cathedral. I never saw anybody with such an abandoned
imagination.
Joan was abroad at the crack of dawn, galloping here and there and
yonder, examining the situation minutely, and choosing what she
considered the most effective positions for her artillery; and with
such accurate judgment did she place her guns that her
Lieutenant-General’s admiration of it still survived in his memory
when his testimony was taken at the Rehabilitation, a quarter of a
century later.
In this testimony the Duke d’Alen‡on said that at Jargeau that
morning of the 12th of June she made her dispositions not like a
novice, but “with the sure and clear judgment of a trained general
of twenty or thirty years’ experience.”
The veteran captains of the armies of France said she was great in
war in all ways, but greatest of all in her genius for posting and
handling artillery.
Who taught the shepherd-girl to do these marvels–she who could
not read, and had had no opportunity to study the complex arts of
war? I do not know any way to solve such a baffling riddle as that,
there being no precedent for it, nothing in history to compare it
with and examine it by. For in history there is no great general,
however gifted, who arrived at success otherwise than through able
teaching and hard study and some experience. It is a riddle which
will never be guessed. I think these vast powers and capacities
were born in her, and that she applied them by an intuition which
could not err.
At eight o’clock all movement ceased, and with it all sounds, all
noise. A mute expectancy reigned. The stillness was something
awful–because it meant so much. There was no air stirring. The
flags on the towers and ramparts hung straight down like tassels.
Wherever one saw a person, that person had stopped what he was
doing, and was in a waiting attitude, a listening attitude. We were
on a commanding spot, clustered around Joan. Not far from us, on
every hand, were the lanes and humble dwellings of these outlying
suburbs. Many people were visible–all were listening, not one was
moving. A man had placed a nail; he was about to fasten
something with it to the door-post of his shop–but he had stopped.
There was his hand reaching up holding the nail; and there was his
other hand n the act of striking with the hammer; but he had
forgotten everything–his head was turned aside listening. Even
children unconsciously stopped in their play; I saw a little boy with
his hoop-stick pointed slanting toward the ground in the act of