is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I
don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident--I shouldn't value
it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural
merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to
reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up
there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything--in
fact, the only thing. All else is dross."

Just then the bugles blew the assembly, and that cut our talk short.

Chapter 25 At Last--Forward!

THE DAYS began to waste away--and nothing decided, nothing done. The army
was full of zeal, but it was also hungry. It got no pay, the treasury was
getting empty, it was becoming impossible to feed it; under pressure of
privation it began to fall apart and disperse--which pleased the trifling
court exceedingly. Joan's distress was pitiful to see. She was obliged to
stand helpless while her victorious army dissolved away until hardly the
skeleton of it was left.

At last one day she went to the Castle of Loches, where the King was
idling. She found him consulting with three of his councilors, Robert le
Ma