had said their say, La Hire took a
chance again, and said:

"There are some that never know how to change. Circumstances may change,
but those people are never able to see that they have got to change too,
to meet those circumstances. All that they know is the one beaten
track that their fathers and grandfathers have followed and that they
themselves have followed in their turn. If an earthquake come and rip
the land to chaos, and that beaten track now lead over precipices and
into morasses, those people can't learn that they must strike out a new
road--no; they will march stupidly along and follow the old one, to death
and perdition. Men, there's a new state of things; and a surpassing
military genius has perceived it with her clear eye. And a new road is
required, and that same clear eye has noted where it must go, and has
marked it out for us. The man does not live, never has lived, never
will live, that can improve upon it! The old state of things was defeat,
defeat, defeat--and by consequence we had troops with no dash, no heart,
no hope. Would you assault stone walls with such? No--there was but one
way with that kind: sit down before a place and wait, wait--starve it
out, if you could. The new case is the very opposite; it is this: men
all on fire with pluck and dash and vim and fury and energy--a restrained
conflagration! What would you do with it? Hold it down and let it
smolder and perish and go out? What would Joan of Arc do with it? Turn
it loose, by the Lord God of heaven and earth, and let it swallow up the
foe in the whirlwind of its fires! Nothing shows the splendor and wisdom
of her military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the
change which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and
only right way to take advantage of it. With her is no sitting down and
starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing,
and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm!
storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his
hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm!
And that is my sort! Jargeau? What of Jargeau, with its battlements and
towers, its devastating artillery, its seven thousand picked veterans?
Joan of Arc is to the fore, and by the splendor of God its fate is
sealed!"

Oh, he carried them. There was not another word said about persuading
Joan to change her tactics. They sat talking comfortabl