But the Sunflower said:  “I will ask you this:  Would the Queen sign a treaty disinheriting her son?”

“That viper?  Certainly.  Nobody is talking of her.  Nobody expects better of her.  There is no villainy she will stick at, if it feed her spite; and she hates her son.  Her signing it is of no consequence.  The King must sign.”

“I will ask you another thing.  What is the King’s condition?  Mad, isn’t he?”

“Yes, and his people love him all the more for it.  It brings him near to them by his sufferings; and pitying him makes them love him.”

“You say right, Jacques d’Arc.  Well, what would you of one that is mad?  Does he know what he does?  No.  Does he do what others make him do?  Yes.  Now, then, I tell you he has signed the treaty.”

“Who made him do it?”

“You know, without my telling.  The Queen.”

Then there was another uproar—­everybody talking at once, and all heaping execrations upon the Queen’s head.  Finally Jacques d’Arc said: 

“But many reports come that are not true.  Nothing so shameful as this has ever come before, nothing that cuts so deep, nothing that has dragged France so low; therefore there is hope that this tale is but another idle rumor.  Where did you get it?”

The color went out of his sister Joan’s face.  She dreaded the answer; and her instinct was right.

“The cur, of Maxey brought it.”

There was a general gasp.  We knew him, you see, for a trusty man.

“Did he believe it?”

The hearts almost stopped beating.  Then came the answer: 

“He did.  And that is not all.  He said he knew it to be true.”

Some of the girls began to sob; the boys were struck silent.  The distress in Joan’s face was like that which one sees in the face of a dumb animal that has received a mortal hurt.  The animal bears it, making no complaint; she bore it also, saying no word.  Her brother Jacques put his hand on her head and caressed her hair to indicate his sympathy, and she gathered the hand to her lips and kissed it for thanks, not saying anything.  Presently the reaction came, and the boys began to talk.  Noel Rainguesson said: 

“Oh, are we never going to be men!  We do grow along so slowly, and France never needed soldiers as she needs them now, to wipe out this black insult.”

“I hate youth!” said Pierre Morel, called the Dragon-fly because his eyes stuck out so.  “You’ve always got to wait, and wait, and wait—­and here are the great wars wasting away for a hundred years, and you never get a chance.  If I could only be a soldier now!”

“As for me, I’m not going to wait much longer,” said the Paladin; “and when I do start you’ll hear from me, I promise you that.  There are some who, in storming a castle, prefer to be in the rear; but as for me, give me the front or none; I will have none in front of me but the officers.”

Even the girls got the war spirit, and Marie Dupont said: