their play; I saw a little boy with his
hoop-stick pointed slanting toward the ground in the act of steering the
hoop around the corner; and so he had stopped and was listening--the hoop
was rolling away, doing its own steering. I saw a young girl prettily
framed in an open window, a watering-pot in her hand and window-boxes of
red flowers under its spout--but the water had ceased to flow; the girl
was listening. Everywhere were these impressive petrified forms; and
everywhere was suspended movement and that awful stillness.

Joan of Arc raised her sword in the air. At the signal, the silence was
torn to rags; cannon after cannon vomited flames and smoke and delivered
its quaking thunders; and we saw answering tongues of fire dart from the
towers and walls of the city, accompanied by answering deep thunders,
and in a minute the walls and the towers disappeared, and in their place
stood vast banks and pyramids of snowy smoke, motionless in the dead
air. The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands
together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her
fair body.

The great artillery duel went on, each side hammering away with all its
might; and it was splendid for smoke and noise, and most exalting to
one's spirits. The poor little town around about us suffered cruelly.
The cannon-balls tore through its slight buildings, wrecking them as if
they had been built of cards; and every moment or two one would see a
huge rock come curving through the upper air above the smoke-clouds and
go plunging down through the roofs. Fire broke out, and columns of flame
and smoke rose toward the sky.

Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather. The sky became
overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke that hid the
English fortresses.

Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and
streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white smoke
in long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against the deep
leaden background of the sky; and then the whizzing missiles began to
knock up the dirt all around us, and I felt no more interest in the
scenery. There was one English gun that was getting our position down
finer and finer all the time. Presently Joan pointed to it and said:

"Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you."

The Duke d'Alencon did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude rashly took
his place, and that cannon