de the Paladin look
like an ordinary man. He liked to like people, therefore people liked
him. He liked us boys from the start; and he liked the knights, and liked
pretty much everybody he came across; but he thought more of a paring of
Joan's finger-nail than he did of all the rest of the world put together.

Yes, that is where we got him--stretched on the wain, going to his death,
poor chap, and nobody to say a good word for him. He was a good find.
Why, the knights treated him almost like an equal--it is the honest
truth; that is the sort of a man he was. They called him the Bastille
sometimes, and sometimes they called him Hellfire, which was on account
of his warm and sumptuous style in battle, and you know they wouldn't
have given him pet names if they hadn't had a good deal of affection for
him.

To the Dwarf, Joan was France, the spirit of France made flesh--he never
got away from that idea that he had started with; and God knows it was
the true one. That was a humble eye to see so great a truth where some
others failed. To me that seems quite remarkable. And yet, after all, it
was, in a way, just what nations do. When they love a great and noble
thing, they embody it--they want it so that they can see it with their
eyes; like liberty, for instance. They are not content with the cloudy
abstract idea, they make a beautiful statue of it, and then their beloved
idea is substantial and they can look at it and worship it. And so it is
as I say; to the Dwarf, Joan was our country embodied, our country made
visible flesh cast in a gracious form. When she stood before others, they
saw Joan of Arc, but he saw France.

Sometimes he would speak of her by that name. It shows you how the idea
was embedded in his mind, and how real it was to him. The world has
called our kings by it, but I know of none of them who has had so good a
right as she to that sublime title.

When the march past was finished, Joan returned to the front and rode at
the head of the column. When we began to file past those grim bastilles
and could glimpse the men within, standing to their guns and ready to
empty death into our ranks, such a faintness came over me and such a
sickness that all things seemed to turn dim and swim before my eyes; and
the other boys looked droopy, too, I thought--including the Paladin,
although I do not know this for certain, because he was ahead of me and I
had to keep my eyes out toward the bastille side, because I could