us just as we were planting our banner again before the ramparts of
the Augustins. We were strong enough now. We had a long and
tough piece of work before us, but we carried it through before
night, Joan keeping us hard at it, and she and La Hire saying we
were able to take that big bastille, and must. The English fought
like–well, they fought like the English; when that is said, there is
no more to say. We made assault after assault, through the smoke
and flame and the deafening cannon-blasts, and at last as the sun
was sinking we carried the place with a rush, and planted our
standard on its walls.
The Augustins was ours. The Tourelles must be ours, too, if we
would free the bridge and raise the siege. We had achieved one
great undertaking, Joan was determined to accomplish the other.
We must lie on our arms where we were, hold fast to what we had
got, and be ready for business in the morning. So Joan was not
minded to let the men be demoralized by pillage and riot and
carousings; she had the Augustins burned, with all its stores in it,
excepting the artillery and ammunition.
Everybody was tired out with this long day’s har work, and of
course this was the case with Joan; still, she wanted to stay with
the army before the Tourelles, to be ready for the assault in the
morning. The chiefs argued with her, and at last persuaded her to
go home and prepare for the great work by taking proper rest, and
also by having a leech look to a wound which she had received in
her foot. So we crossed with them and went home.
Just as usual, we found the town in a fury of joy, all the bells
clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never
went out or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons
for one of these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always
on hand. There had been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of
upheavals for the past seven months, therefore the people too to
the upheavals with all the more relish on that account.
Chapter 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
TO GET away from the usual crowd of visitors and have a rest,
Joan went with Catherine straight to the apartment which the two
occupied together, and there they took their supper and there the
wound was dressed. But then, instead of going to bed, Joan, weary
as she was, sent the Dwarf for me, in spite of Catherine’s protests
and persuasions. She said she had something on her mind, and
must send a courier to Domremy with a letter for our old PЉre
Fronte to read to her mother. I came, and she began to dictate.
After some loving words and greetings to her mother and family,
came this:
“But the thing which moves me to write now, is to say that when
you presently hear that I am wounded, you shall give yourself no
concern about it, and refuse faith to any that shall try to make you
believe it is serious.”
She was going on, when Catherine spoke up and said:
“Ah, but it will fright her so to read these words. Strike them out,
Joan, strike them out, and wait only one day–two days at
most–then write and say your foot was wounded but is well
again–for it surely be well then, or very near it. Don’t distress her,
Joan; do as I say.”
A laugh like the laugh of the old days, the impulsive free laugh of
an untroubled spirit, a laugh like a chime of bells, was Joan’s
answer; then she said:
“My foot? Why should I write about such a scratch as that? I was
not thinking of it, dear heart.”
“Child, have you another wound and a worse, and have not spoken
of it? What have you been dreaming about, that you–”
She had jumped up, full of vague fears, to have the leech called
back at once, but Joan laid her hand upon her arm and made her sit
down again, saying: