y employed in fighting with M.
de Karnak between the Battle of Poitiers (not ours, but the other) and
the Siege of Orleans? I love my Dark and Middle Ages; but I should say
that there was considerable diabolic activity in them, outside tombs. Or
was the Princedom of the Air "in commission" all that time? Minor
improbabilities constantly jar, and there are numerous small blunders of
fact[364] of the unintentional kind, which irritate more than
intentional ones of some importance.

But at the end the book improves quite astonishingly. Tristan, as has
been said, has been specially commissioned by the fiend to effect the
ruin of Joan. He has induced his half-brother, Gilles de Retz--not,
indeed, to take the English side, for patriotism, as is well known, was
the one redeeming point of that extremely loathsome person, but--to join
the seigneurs who were malcontent with her, and if possible drug her and
violate her, a process, as we have seen, quite congenial, hereditarily
as well as otherwise, to M. de Laval. He is foiled, of course, and
pardoned. But Tristan himself openly takes the English side, inflicts
great damage on his countrymen, and after our defeat at the bastilles or
bastides round Orleans, resumes his machinations against Joan, helps to
effect her capture, and does his utmost to torment and insult her, and
if possible resume Gilles's attempt, in her imprisonment; while, on the
contrary, his brother Olivier (they are both disguised as monks) works
on her side, nearly saves her,[365] and attends her on the scaffold. It
is somewhat earlier than this that the author, as has been said, "wakes
up" and wakes _us_ up. When Tristan, admitted to Joan's cell, designs
the same outrage to which he had counselled his brother, it is the
Maid's assumption of her armour to protect herself from him that (in
this point for once historically) seals her fate. But at the very last
his hatred is changed, _not_ at all impossibly or improbably, to violent
love as she smiles on him from the fire; and he sees the legendary dove
mount to heaven, after he himself has flung to her, at her dying cry, an
improvised crucifix, or at least cross. And then a choice miracle
happens, told with almost all the vigour of the "Vin de Porto" itself.
Tristan seeks absolution, but is, though not harshly, refused, before
penitence and penance. He begs his brother Olivier's pardon, and is
again refused--this time with vituperation--but bears it calmly. He
tak