to his name, nor a regiment of soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not
intending to fight, he means to make no further resistance; in truth,
there is but one thing that he is intending to do–give the whole
thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer, and run away to Scotland.
There are the facts. Are they correct?”
“Yes, they are correct.”
“Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in
order to realize what they mean.”
She asked, in an ordinary, level tone:
“What–that the case of France is hopeless?”
“Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible.”
“How can you say that? How can you feel like that?”
“How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the
circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you
really any hope for France–really and actually?”
“Hope–oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep
it. Do not doubt it.”
It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded
to-day. It must be so, or she would see that those figures could
mean only one thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would
see. So I said:
“Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head.
You are not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here–I
want to make a picture of them, her eon the ground with a stick.
Now, this rough outline is France. Through its middle, east and
west, I draw a river.”
“Yes, the Loire.”
“Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight
grip of the English.”
“Yes.”
“And this whole southern half is really in nobody’s hands at all–as
our King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign
land. England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume
full possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France
is gone, France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What
was France is now but a British province. Is this true?”
Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct:
“Yes, it is true.”
“Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is
complete: When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch
soldiers, under the French flag, have won a barren fight or two a
few years back, but I am speaking of French ones. Since eight
thousand Englishmen nearly annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen
a dozen years ago at Agincourt, French courage has been
paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day that if you
confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the French
will run.”
“It is a pity, but even these things are true.”
“Then certainly the day for hoping is past.”
I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could
not fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that
there was no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and
disappointed also. She said, without any doubt in her tone:
“France will rise again. You shall see.”
“Rise?–with this burden of English armies on her back!”
“She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!” This with
spirit.
“Without soldiers to fight with?”
“The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will
march.”
“March to the rear, as usual?”
“No; to the front–ever to the front–always to the front! You shall
see.”
“And the pauper King?”
“He will mount his throne–he will wear his crown.”
“Well, of a truth this makes one’s head dizzy. Why, if I could
believe that in thirty years from now the English domination would
be broken and the French monarch’s head find itself hooped with a
real crown of sovereignty–”
“Both will have happened before two years are sped.”
“Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime
impossibilities?”
“God.”
It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.
What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question
kept running in my mind during two or three days. It was
inevitable that I should think of madness. What other way was