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. The 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 way well,” said the maire. “He should be informed, and that
at once. It is an outrage that such things whould be permitted.
Why, we are not safe in our beds, and he taking his case 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 Donois, Bastard of Orleans–call him a eneral! 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 olor rose in Joan’s face, and she said:
“I know not how any can be so hardy as to use such words