way to take advantage of it.  With her is no sitting down and starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing, and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm! storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm!  And that is my sort!  Jargeau?  What of Jargeau, with its battlements and towers, its devastating artillery, its seven thousand picked veterans?  Joan of Arc is to the fore, and by the splendor of God its fate is sealed!”

Oh, he carried them.  There was not another word said about persuading Joan to change her tactics.  They sat talking comfortably enough after that.

By and by Joan entered, and they rose and saluted with their swords, and she asked what their pleasure might be.  La Hire said: 

“It is settled, my General.  The matter concerned Jargeau.  There were some who thought we could not take the place.”

Joan laughed her pleasant laugh, her merry, carefree laugh; the laugh that rippled so buoyantly from her lips and made old people feel young again to hear it; and she said to the company: 

“Have no fears—­indeed, there is no need nor any occasion for them.  We will strike the English boldly by assault, and you will see.”  Then a faraway look came into her eyes, and I think that a picture of her home drifted across the vision of her mind; for she said very gently, and as one who muses, “But that I know God guides us and will give us success, I had liefer keep sheep than endure these perils.”

We had a homelike farewell supper that evening—­just the personal staff and the family.  Joan had to miss it; for the city had given a banquet in her honor, and she had gone there in state with the Grand Staff, through a riot of joy-bells and a sparkling Milky Way of illuminations.

After supper some lively young folk whom we knew came in, and we presently forgot that we were soldiers, and only remembered that we were boys and girls and full of animal spirits and long-pent fun; and so there was dancing, and games, and romps, and screams of laughter—­just as extravagant and innocent and noisy a good time as ever I had in my life.  Dear, dear, how long ago it was!—­and I was young then.  And outside, all the while, was the measured tramp of marching battalions, belated odds and ends of the French power gathering for the morrow’s tragedy on the grim stage of war.  Yes, in those days we had those contrasts side by side.  And as I passed along to bed there was another one:  the big Dwarf, in brave new armor, sat sentry at Joan’s door—­the stern Spirit of War made flesh, as it were—­and on his ample shoulder was curled a kitten asleep.

Chapter 27 How Joan Took Jargeau