to see that the French house is bankrupt, that one-half of
its property is already in the English sheriff's hands and the other
half in nobody's--except those of irresponsible raiders and robbers
confessing allegiance to nobody. Our King is shut up with his favorites
and fools in inglorious idleness and poverty in a narrow little patch
of the kingdom--a sort of back lot, as one may say--and has no authority
there or anywhere else, hasn't a farthing to his name, nor a regiment of
soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not intending to fight, he means to
make no further resistance; in truth, there is but one thing that he is
intending to do--give the whole thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer,
and run away to Scotland. There are the facts. Are they correct?"

"Yes, they are correct."

"Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in order
to realize what they mean."

She asked, in an ordinary, level tone:

"What--that the case of France is hopeless?"

"Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible."

"How can you say that? How can you feel like that?"

"How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the
circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you
really any hope for France--really and actually?"

"Hope--oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep it. Do
not doubt it."

It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded to-day.
It must be so, or she would see that those figures could mean only one
thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would see. So I said:

"Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head. You
are not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here--I want to make
a picture of them, here on the ground with a stick. Now, this rough
outline is France. Through its middle, east and west, I draw a river."

"Yes, the Loire."

"Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight grip
of the English."

"Yes."

"And this whole southern half is really in nobody's hands at all--as our
King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign land.
England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume full
possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France is gone,
France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What was France is
now but a British province. Is this true?"

Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct:

"Y