“Fair Sir God, I pray you to do by La Hire as he would do by you if you were La Hire and he were God.” [1]

Then he put on his helmet and marched out of Joan’s tent as satisfied with himself as any one might be who had arranged a perplexed and difficult business to the content and admiration of all the parties concerned in the matter.

If I had know that he had been praying, I could have understood why he was feeling so superior, but of course I could not know that.

I was coming to the tent at that moment, and saw him come out, and saw him march away in that large fashion, and indeed it was fine and beautiful to see.  But when I got to the tent door I stopped and stepped back, grieved and shocked, for I heard Joan crying, as I mistakenly thought—­crying as if she could not contain nor endure the anguish of her soul, crying as if she would die.  But it was not so, she was laughing—­laughing at La Hire’s prayer.

It was not until six-and-thirty years afterward that I found that out, and then—­oh, then I only cried when that picture of young care-free mirth rose before me out of the blur and mists of that long-vanished time; for there had come a day between, when God’s good gift of laughter had gone out from me to come again no more in this life.

[1] This prayer has been stolen many times and by many nations in the past four hundred and sixty years, but it originated with La Hire, and the fact is of official record in the National Archives of France.  We have the authority of Michelet for this. —­Translator

Chapter 13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise

We marched out in great strength and splendor, and took the road toward Orleans.  The initial part of Joan’s great dream was realizing itself at last.  It was the first time that any of us youngsters had ever seen an army, and it was a most stately and imposing spectacle to us.  It was indeed an inspiring sight, that interminable column, stretching away into the fading distances, and curving itself in and out of the crookedness of the road like a mighty serpent.  Joan rode at the head of it with her personal staff; then came a body of priests singing the Veni Creator, the banner of the Cross rising out of their midst; after these the glinting forest of spears.  The several divisions were commanded by the great Armagnac generals, La Hire, and Marshal de Boussac, the Sire de Retz, Florent d’Illiers, and Poton de Saintrailles.

Each in his degree was tough, and there were three degrees—­tough, tougher, toughest—­and La Hire was the last by a shade, but only a shade.  They were just illustrious official brigands, the whole party; and by long habits of lawlessness they had lost all acquaintanceship with obedience, if they had ever had any.

But what was the good of saying that?  These independent birds knew no law.  They seldom obeyed the King; they never obeyed him when it didn’t suit them to do it.  Would they obey the Maid?  In the first place they wouldn’t know how to obey her or anybody else, and in the second place it was of course not possible for them to take her military character seriously—­that country-girl of seventeen who had been trained for the complex and terrible business of war—­how?  By tending sheep.