privately. And, sure enough, to-morrow it was a cathedral.
I never saw anybody with such an abandoned imagination.

Joan was abroad at the crack of dawn, galloping here and there and
yonder, examining the situation minutely, and choosing what she
considered the most effective positions for her artillery; and with such
accurate judgment did she place her guns that her Lieutenant-General's
admiration of it still survived in his memory when his testimony was
taken at the Rehabilitation, a quarter of a century later.

In this testimony the Duke d'Alencon said that at Jargeau that morning
of the 12th of June she made her dispositions not like a novice, but
"with the sure and clear judgment of a trained general of twenty or
thirty years' experience."

The veteran captains of the armies of France said she was great in war
in all ways, but greatest of all in her genius for posting and handling
artillery.

Who taught the shepherd-girl to do these marvels--she who could not read,
and had had no opportunity to study the complex arts of war? I do not
know any way to solve such a baffling riddle as that, there being no
precedent for it, nothing in history to compare it with and examine
it by. For in history there is no great general, however gifted, who
arrived at success otherwise than through able teaching and hard study
and some experience. It is a riddle which will never be guessed. I think
these vast powers and capacities were born in her, and that she applied
them by an intuition which could not err.

At eight o'clock all movement ceased, and with it all sounds, all noise.
A mute expectancy reigned. The stillness was something awful--because it
meant so much. There was no air stirring. The flags on the towers and
ramparts hung straight down like tassels. Wherever one saw a person,
that person had stopped what he was doing, and was in a waiting
attitude, a listening attitude. We were on a commanding spot, clustered
around Joan. Not far from us, on every hand, were the lanes and humble
dwellings of these outlying suburbs. Many people were visible--all were
listening, not one was moving. A man had placed a nail; he was about
to fasten something with it to the door-post of his shop--but he had
stopped. There was his hand reaching up holding the nail; and there
was his other hand in the act of striking with the hammer; but he had
forgotten everything--his head was turned aside listening. Even children
unconsciously stopped in