e.

You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since the
raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that had
really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants may
have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous
occurrences that had filtered from the world's history dimly into their
minds, the truth is that they hadn't. One biting little fact, visible to
their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became at once
more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the world's
history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It amuses me
now when I recall how our elders talked then. The fumed and fretted in a
fine fashion.

"Ah, yes," said old Jacques d'Arc, "things are come to a pretty pass,
indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from
idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business." He meant our
young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII.

"You way well," said the maire. "He should be informed, and that at once.
It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are not
safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made known,
indeed it shall--all France shall hear of it!"

To hear them talk, one would have imagined that all the previous ten
thousand sackings and burnings in France had been but fables, and this
one the only fact. It is always the way; words will answer as long as it
is only a person's neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets
into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something.

The big event filled us young people with talk, too. We let it flow in a
steady stream while we tended the flocks. We were beginning to feel
pretty important now, for I was eighteen and the other youths were from
one to four years older--young men, in fact. One day the Paladin was
arrogantly criticizing the patriot generals of France and said:

"Look at Dunois, Bastard of Orleans--call him a general! Just put me in
his place once--never mind what I would do, it is not for me to say, I
have no stomach for talk, my way is to act and let others do the
talking--but just put me in his place once, that's all! And look at
Saintrailles--pooh! and that blustering La Hire, now what a general that
is!"

It shocked everybody to hear these great names so flippantly handled, for
to us these renowned soldiers were almost gods.