e Paladin brought this news and asked leave to
speak to Joan, and I was up and on duty then. It was a bitter stroke to
me to see what a chance I had lost. Joan made searching inquiries, and
satisfied herself that the word was true, then she made this annoying
remark:

"You have done well, and you have my thanks. It may be that you have
prevented a disaster. Your name and service shall receive official
mention."

Then he bowed low, and when he rose he was eleven feet high. As he
swelled out past me he covertly pulled down the corner of his eye with
his finger and muttered part of that defiled refrain, "Oh, tears, ah,
tears, oh, sad sweet tears!--name in General Orders--personal mention to
the King, you see!"

I wished Joan could have seen his conduct, but she was busy thinking what
she would do. Then she had me fetch the knight Jean de Metz, and in a
minute he was off for La Hire's quarters with orders for him and the Lord
de Villars and Florent d'Illiers to report to her at five o'clock next
morning with five hundred picked men well mounted. The histories say half
past four, but it is not true, I heard the order given.

We were on our way at five to the minute, and encountered the head of the
arriving column between six and seven, a couple of leagues from the city.
Dunois was pleased, for the army had begun to get restive and show
uneasiness now that it was getting so near to the dreaded bastilles. But
that all disappeared now, as the word ran down the line, with a huzza
that swept along the length of it like a wave, that the Maid was come.
Dunois asked her to halt and let the column pass in review, so that the
men could be sure that the reports of her presence was not a ruse to
revive their courage. So she took position at the side of the road with
her staff, and the battalions swung by with a martial stride, huzzaing.
Joan was armed, except her head. She was wearing the cunning little
velvet cap with the mass of curved white ostrich plumes tumbling over its
edges which the city of Orleans had given her the night she arrived--the
one that is in the picture that hangs in the H"tel de Ville at Rouen. She
was looking about fifteen. The sight of soldiers always set her blood to
leaping, and lit the fires in her eyes and brought the warm rich color to
her cheeks; it was then that you saw that she was too beautiful to be of
the earth, or at any rate that there was a subtle something somewhere
about her beauty that differ