brought was notice from the English to Joan that they would
presently catch her and burn her if she did not clear out now while
she had a chance, and “go back to her proper trade of minding
cows.”
She held her peace, only saying it was a pity that the English
would persist in inviting present disaster and eventual destruction
when she was “doing all she could to get them out of the country
with their lives still in their bodies.”
Presently she thought of an arrangement that might be acceptable,
and said to the heralds, “Go back and say to Lord Talbot this, from
me: ‘Come out of your bastilles with your host, and I will come
with mine; if I beat you, go in peace out of France; if you beat me,
burn me, according to your desire.'”
I did not hear this, but Dunois did, and spoke of it. The challenge
was refused.
Sunday morning her Voices or some instinct gave her a warning,
and she sent Dunois to Blois to take command of the army and
hurry it to Orleans. It was a wise move, for he found Regnault de
Chartres and some more of the King’s pet rascals there trying their
best to disperse the army, and crippling all the efforts of Joan’s
generals to head it for Orleans. They were a fine lot, those
miscreants. They turned their attention to Dunois now, but he had
balked Joan once, with unpleasant results to himself, and was not
minded to meddle in that way again. He soon had the army
moving.
Chapter 15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
WE OF the personal staff were in fairyland now, during the few
days that we waited for the return of the army. We went into
society. To our two knights this was not a novelty, but to us young
villagers it was a new and wonderful life. Any position of any sort
near the person of the Maid of Vaucouleurs conferred high
distinction upon the holder and caused his society to be courted;
and so the D’Arc brothers, and No‰l, and the Paladin, humble
peasants at home, were gentlemen here, personages of weight and
influence. It was fine to see how soon their country diffidences and
awkwardnesses melted away under this pleasant sun of deference
and disappeared, and how lightly and easily they took to their new
atmosphere. The Paladin was as happy as it was possible for any
one in this earth to be. His tongue went all the time, and daily he
got new delight out of hearing himself talk. He began to enlarge
his ancestry and spread it out all around, and ennoble it right and
left, and it was not long until it consisted almost entirely of dukes.
He worked up his old battles and tricked them out with fresh
splendors; also with new terrors, for he added artillery now. We
had seen cannon for the first time at Blois–a few pieces–here
there was plenty of it, and now and then we had the impressive
spectacle of a huge English bastille hidden from sight in a
mountain of smoke from its own guns, with lances of red flame
darting through it; and this grand picture, along with the quaking
thunders pounding away in the heart of it, inflamed the Paladin’s
imagination and enabled him to dress out those
ambuscade-skirmishes of ours with a sublimity which made it
impossible for any to recognize them at all except people who had
not been there.
You may suspect that there was a special inspiration for these
great efforts of the Paladin’s, and there was. It was the daughter of
the house, Catherine Boucher, who was eighteen, and gentle and
lovely in her ways, and very beautiful. I think she might have been
as beautiful as Joan herself, if she had had Joan’s eyes. But that
could never be. There was never but that one pair, there will never
be another. Joan’s eyes were deep and rich and wonderful beyond
anything merely earthly. They spoke all the languages–they had no
need of words. They produced all effects–and just by a glance, just
a single glance; a glance that could convict a liar of his lie and