But Noel was clever.  He knew the very best background for a poem of deep and refined sentiment and pathetic melancholy was one where great and satisfying merriment had prepared the spirit for the powerful contrast.

So he paused until all was quiet, then his face grew grave and assumed an impressive aspect, and at once all faces sobered in sympathy and took on a look of wondering and expectant interest.  Now he began in a low but distinct voice the opening verses of The Rose.  As he breathed the rhythmic measures forth, and one gracious line after another fell upon those enchanted ears in that deep hush, one could catch, on every hand, half-audible ejaculations of “How lovely—­how beautiful—­how exquisite!”

By this time the Paladin, who had gone away for a moment with the opening of the poem, was back again, and had stepped within the door.  He stood there now, resting his great frame against the wall and gazing toward the reciter like one entranced.  When Noel got to the second part, and that heart-breaking refrain began to melt and move all listeners, the Paladin began to wipe away tears with the back of first one hand and then the other.  The next time the refrain was repeated he got to snuffling, and sort of half sobbing, and went to wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his doublet.  He was so conspicuous that he embarrassed Noel a little, and also had an ill effect upon the audience.  With the next repetition he broke quite down and began to cry like a calf, which ruined all the effect and started many to the audience to laughing.  Then he went on from bad to worse, until I never saw such a spectacle; for he fetched out a towel from under his doublet and began to swab his eyes with it and let go the most infernal bellowings mixed up with sobbings and groanings and retchings and barkings and coughings and snortings and screamings and howlings —­and he twisted himself about on his heels and squirmed this way and that, still pouring out that brutal clamor and flourishing his towel in the air and swabbing again and wringing it out.  Hear?  You couldn’t hear yourself think.  Noel was wholly drowned out and silenced, and those people were laughing the very lungs out of themselves.  It was the most degrading sight that ever was.  Now I heard the clankety-clank that plate-armor makes when the man that is in it is running, and then alongside my head there burst out the most inhuman explosion of laughter that ever rent the drum of a person’s ear, and I looked, and it was La Hire; and the stood there with his gauntlets on his hips and his head tilted back and his jaws spread to that degree to let out his hurricanes and his thunders that it amounted to indecent exposure, for you could see everything that was in him.  Only one thing more and worse could happen, and it happened:  at the other door I saw the flurry and bustle and bowings and scrapings of officials and flunkeys which means that some great personage is coming—­then Joan of Arc stepped in, and the house rose!  Yes, and tried to shut its indecorous mouth and make itself grave and proper; but when it saw the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked God for this mercy and the earthquake that followed.