r any one
in this earth to be. His tongue went all the time, and daily he got new
delight out of hearing himself talk. He began to enlarge his ancestry
and spread it out all around, and ennoble it right and left, and it was
not long until it consisted almost entirely of dukes. He worked up his
old battles and tricked them out with fresh splendors; also with new
terrors, for he added artillery now. We had seen cannon for the first
time at Blois--a few pieces--here there was plenty of it, and now and then
we had the impressive spectacle of a huge English bastille hidden from
sight in a mountain of smoke from its own guns, with lances of red
flame darting through it; and this grand picture, along with the quaking
thunders pounding away in the heart of it, inflamed the Paladin's
imagination and enabled him to dress out those ambuscade-skirmishes of
ours with a sublimity which made it impossible for any to recognize them
at all except people who had not been there.

You may suspect that there was a special inspiration for these great
efforts of the Paladin's, and there was. It was the daughter of the
house, Catherine Boucher, who was eighteen, and gentle and lovely in her
ways, and very beautiful. I think she might have been as beautiful as
Joan herself, if she had had Joan's eyes. But that could never be. There
was never but that one pair, there will never be another. Joan's eyes
were deep and rich and wonderful beyond anything merely earthly. They
spoke all the languages--they had no need of words. They produced all
effects--and just by a glance, just a single glance; a glance that could
convict a liar of his lie and make him confess it; that could bring down
a proud man's pride and make him humble; that could put courage into a
coward and strike dead the courage of the bravest; that could appease
resentments and real hatreds; that could make the doubter believe and
the hopeless hope again; that could purify the impure mind; that could
persuade--ah, there it is--persuasion! that is the word; what or who is
it that it couldn't persuade? The maniac of Domremy--the fairy-banishing
priest--the reverend tribunal of Toul--the doubting and superstitious
Laxart--the obstinate veteran of Vaucouleurs--the characterless heir
of France--the sages and scholars of the Parliament and University
of Poitiers--the darling of Satan, La Hire--the masterless Bastard of
Orleans, accustomed to acknowledge no way as right and rational but his
own