Tourelles with our boulevard; wherefore, when at last
we drove our English ahead of us and they tried to cross that drawbridge
and join their friends in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way
under them and emptied them in a mass into the river in their heavy
armor--and a pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as
that.

"Ah, God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful spectacle.
She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate tears although
one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her with a coarse name
three days before, when she had sent him a message asking him to
surrender. That was their leader, Sir Williams Glasdale, a most valorous
knight. He was clothed all in steel; so he plunged under water like a
lance, and of course came up no more.

We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves against the
last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans from friends and
supplies. Before the sun was quite down, Joan's forever memorable day's
work was finished, her banner floated from the fortress of the Tourelles,
her promise was fulfilled, she had raised the siege of Orleans!

The seven months' beleaguerment was ended, the thing which the first
generals of France had called impossible was accomplished; in spite of
all that the King's ministers and war-councils could do to prevent it,
this little country-maid at seventeen had carried her immortal task
through, and had done it in four days!

Good news travels fast, sometimes, as well as bad. By the time we were
ready to start homeward by the bridge the whole city of Orleans was one
red flame of bonfires, and the heavens blushed with satisfaction to see
it; and the booming and bellowing of cannon and the banging of bells
surpassed by great odds anything that even Orleans had attempted before
in the way of noise.

When we arrived--well, there is no describing that. Why, those acres of
people that we plowed through shed tears enough to raise the river; there
was not a face in the glare of those fires that hadn't tears streaming
down it; and if Joan's feet had not been protected by iron they would
have kissed them off of her. "Welcome! welcome to the Maid of Orleans!"
That was the cry; I heard it a hundred thousand times. "Welcome to our
Maid!" some of them worded it.

No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as
Joan of Arc reached that day. And do you think it turned her