knew the bitterness of
that before. We shall know it now."

And so she went on talking about it and growing more and more troubled
about it, until one could see that it was filling all her mind.

At last we came upon a dreadful object. It was the madman--hacked and
stabbed to death in his iron cage in the corner of the square. It was a
bloody and dreadful sight. Hardly any of us young people had ever seen
a man before who had lost his life by violence; so this cadaver had an
awful fascination for us; we could not take our eyes from it. I mean, it
had that sort of fascination for all of us but one. That one was Joan.
She turned away in horror, and could not be persuaded to go near it
again. There--it is a striking reminder that we are but creatures of use
and custom; yes, and it is a reminder, too, of how harshly and unfairly
fate deals with us sometimes. For it was so ordered that the very ones
among us who were most fascinated with mutilated and bloody death were
to live their lives in peace, while that other, who had a native and
deep horror of it, must presently go forth and have it as a familiar
spectacle every day on the field of battle.

You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since
the raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that
had really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants
may have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous
occurrences that had filtered from the world's history dimly into their
minds, the truth is that they hadn't. One biting little fact, visible
to their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became
at once more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the
world's history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It
amuses me now when I recall how our elders talked then. They fumed and
fretted in a fine fashion.

"Ah, yes," said old Jacques d'Arc, "things are come to a pretty pass,
indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from
idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business." He meant our
young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII.

"You say well," said the maire. "He should be informed, and that at
once. It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are
not safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made
known, indeed it shall--all France shall hear of it!"

To hear them talk, one wo