“Oh, don’t be misled.  The title of Marshal of France didn’t mean so much in Gilles’s time as it did afterward in the reign of Francis I, and nothing like what it has come to mean since Napoleon.

“What was the conduct of Gilles de Rais toward Jeanne d’Arc?  We have no certain knowledge.  M. Vallet de Viriville, without proof, accuses him of treachery.  M. l’abbe Bossard, on the contrary, claims—­and alleges plausible reasons for entertaining the opinion—­that he was loyal to her and watched over her devotedly.

“What is certain is that Gilles’s soul became saturated with mystical ideas.  His whole history proves it.

“He was constantly in association with this extraordinary maid whose adventures seemed to attest the possibility of divine intervention in earthly affairs.  He witnessed the miracle of a peasant girl dominating a court of ruffians and bandits and arousing a cowardly king who was on the point of flight.  He witnessed the incredible episode of a virgin bringing back to the fold such black rams as La Hire, Xaintrailles, Beaumanoir, Chabannes, Dunois, and Gaucourt, and washing their old fleeces whiter than snow.  Undoubtedly Gilles also, under her shepherding, docilely cropped the white grass of the gospel, took communion the morning of a battle, and revered Jeanne as a saint.

“He saw the Maid fulfil all her promises.  She raised the siege of Orleans, had the king consecrated at Rheims, and then declared that her mission was accomplished and asked as a boon that she be permitted to return home.

“Now I should say that as a result of such an association Gilles’s mysticism began to soar.  Henceforth we have to deal with a man who is half-freebooter, half-monk.  Moreover—­”

“Pardon the interruption, but I am not so sure that Jeanne d’Arc’s intervention was a good thing for France.”

“Why not?”

“I will explain.  You know that the defenders of Charles were for the most part Mediterranean cut-throats, ferocious pillagers, execrated by the very people they came to protect.  The Hundred Years’ War, in effect, was a war of the South against the North.  England at that epoch had not got over the Conquest and was Norman in blood, language, and tradition.  Suppose Jeanne d’Arc had stayed with her mother and stuck to her knitting.  Charles VII would have been dispossessed and the war would have come to an end.  The Plantagenets would have reigned over England and France, which, in primeval times before the Channel existed, formed one territory occupied by one race, as you know.  Thus there would have been a single united and powerful kingdom of the North, reaching as far as the province of Languedoc and embracing peoples whose tastes, instincts, and customs were alike.  On the other hand, the coronation of a Valois at Rheims created a heterogeneous and preposterous France, separating homogeneous elements, uniting the most incompatible nationalities, races the most hostile to each other, and identifying us—­inseparably, alas!—­with those stained-skinned, varnished-eyed munchers of chocolate and raveners of garlic, who are not Frenchmen at all, but Spaniards and Italians.  In a word, if it hadn’t been for Jeanne d’Arc, France would not now belong to that line of histrionic, forensic, perfidious chatterboxes, the precious Latin race—­Devil take it!”