id:

"Well, it shall be as you will. What are you called?"

The man answered with unsmiling simplicity:

"They call me the Dwarf, but I think it is more in jest than otherwise."

It made Joan laugh, and she said:

"It has something of that look truly! What is the office of that vast
ax?"

The soldier replied with the same gravity--which must have been born to
him, it sat upon him so naturally:

"It is to persuade persons to respect France."

Joan laughed again, and said:

"Have you given many lessons?"

"Ah, indeed, yes--many."

"The pupils behaved to suit you, afterward?"

"Yes; it made them quiet--quite pleasant and quiet."

"I should think it would happen so. Would you like to be my
man-at-arms?--orderly, sentinel, or something like that?"

"If I may!"

"Then you shall. You shall have proper armor, and shall go on teaching
your art. Take one of those led horses there, and follow the staff when
we move."

That is how we came by the Dwarf; and a good fellow he was. Joan picked
him out on sight, but it wasn't a mistake; no one could be faithfuler
than he was, and he was a devil and the son of a devil when he turned
himself loose with his ax. He was so big that he made 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