clack.”
“Come, I like that! I didn’t want to talk. I tried to get out of talking.
If you didn’t want to hear my clack, what did you keep intruding
your conversation on me for?”
“I? I never dreamed of such a thing.”
“Well, you did it, anyway. And I have a right to feel hurt, and I do
feel hurt, to have you treat me so. It seems to me that when a
person goads, and crowds, and in a manner forces another person
to talk, it is neither very fair nor very good-mannered to call what
he says clack.”
“Oh, snuffle–do! and break your heart, you poor thing. Somebody
fetch this sick doll a sugar-rag. Look you, Sir Jean de Metz, do you
feel absolutely certain about that thing?”
“What thing?”
“Why, that Jean and Pierre are going to take precedence of all the
lay noblesse hereabouts except the Duke d’Alen‡on?”
“I think there is not a doubt of it.”
The Standard-Bearer was deep in thoughts and dreams a few
moments, then the silk-and-velvet expanse of his vast breast rose
and fell with a sigh, and he said:
“Dear, dear, what a lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I
don’t care. I shouldn’t care to be a painted accident–I shouldn’t
value it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by
sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the
zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little
accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else’s catapult. To
me, merit is everything–in fact, the only thing. All else is dross.”
Just then the bugles blew the assembly, and that cut our talk short.
Chapter 25 At Last–Forward!
THE DAYS began to waste away–and nothing decided,nothing
done. The army was full of zeal, but it was also hungry. It got no
pay, the treasury was getting empty, it was becoming impossible to
feed it; under pressure of privation it began to fall apart and
disperse–which pleased the trifling court exceedingly. Joan’s
distress was pitiful to see. She was obliged to stand helpless while
her victorious army dissolved away until hardly the skeleton of it
was left.
At last one day she went to the Castle of Loches, where the King
was idling. She found him consulting with three of his councilors,
Robert le Ma‡on, a former Chancellor of France, Christophe
d’Harcourt, and Gerard Machet. The Bastard of Orleans was
present also, and it is through him that we know what happened.
Joan threw herself at the King’s feet and embraced his knees,
saying:
“Noble Dauphin, prithee hold no more of these long and numerous
councils, but come, and come quickly, to Rheims and receive your
crown.”
Christophe d’Harcourt asked:
“Is it your Voices that command you to say that to the King?”
“Yes, and urgently.”
“Then will you not tell us in the King’s presence in what way the
Voices communicate with you?”
It was another sly attempt to trap Joan into indiscreet admissions
and dangerous pretensions. But nothing came of it. Joan’s answer
was simple and straightforward, and the smooth Bishop was not
able to find any fault with it. She said that when she met with
people who doubted the truth of her mission she went aside and
prayed, complaining of the distrust of these, and then the
comforting Voices were heard at her ear saying, soft and low, “Go
forward, Daughter of God, and I will help thee.” Then she added,
“When I hear that, the joy in my heart, oh, it is insupportable!”
The Bastard said that when she said these words her face lit up as
with a flame, and she was like one in an ecstasy.
Joan pleaded, persuaded, reasoned; gaining ground little by little,
but opposed step by step by the council. She begged, she implored,
leave to march. When they could answer nothing further, they
granted that perhaps it had been a mistake to let the army waste
away, but how could we help it now? how could we march without
an army?
“Raise one!” said Joan.
“But it will take six weeks.”