anything, but leaving their fortresses just as they were,
provisioned, armed, and equipped for a long siege. It was difficult for
the people to believe that this great thing had really happened; that
they were actually free once more, and might go and come through any
gate they pleased, with none to molest or forbid; that the terrible
Talbot, that scourge of the French, that man whose mere name had been
able to annul the effectiveness of French armies, was gone, vanished,
retreating--driven away by a girl.

The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the crowds poured. They
swarmed about the English bastilles like an invasion of ants, but
noisier than those creatures, and carried off the artillery and stores,
then turned all those dozen fortresses into monster bonfires, imitation
volcanoes whose lofty columns of thick smoke seemed supporting the arch
of the sky.

The delight of the children took another form. To some of the younger
ones seven months was a sort of lifetime. They had forgotten what
grass was like, and the velvety green meadows seemed paradise to their
surprised and happy eyes after the long habit of seeing nothing but
dirty lanes and streets. It was a wonder to them--those spacious reaches
of open country to run and dance and tumble and frolic in, after their
dull and joyless captivity; so they scampered far and wide over the fair
regions on both sides of the river, and came back at eventide weary,
but laden with flowers and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh
country air and the vigorous exercise.

After the burnings, the grown folk followed Joan from church to church
and put in the day in thanksgivings for the city's deliverance, and at
night they feted her and her generals and illuminated the town, and high
and low gave themselves up to festivities and rejoicings. By the time
the populace were fairly in bed, toward dawn, we were in the saddle and
away toward Tours to report to the King.

That was a march which would have turned any one's head but Joan's. We
moved between emotional ranks of grateful country-people all the way.
They crowded about Joan to touch her feet, her horse, her armor, and
they even knelt in the road and kissed her horse's hoof-prints.

The land was full of her praises. The most illustrious chiefs of the
church wrote to the King extolling the Maid, comparing her to the
saints and heroes of the Bible, and warning him not to let "unbelief,
ingratitude, or other injustice