Nor were the reviewers enthusiastic, as a rule.  Perhaps they did not read it over-carefully, or perhaps they were swayed a good deal by a sort of general verdict that, in attempting ‘Joan of Arc’, Mark Twain had gone out of his proper field.  Furthermore, there were a number of Joan books published just then, mainly sober, somber books, in which Joan was pictured properly enough as a saint, and never as anything else—­never being permitted to smile or enjoy the lighter side of life, to be a human being, in fact, at all.

But this is just the very wonder of Mark Twain’s Joan.  She is a saint; she is rare, she is exquisite, she is all that is lovely, and she is a human being besides.  Considered from every point of view, Joan of Arc is Mark Twain’s supreme literary expression, the loftiest, the most delicate, the most luminous example of his work.  It is so from the first word of its beginning, that wonderful “Translator’s Preface,” to the last word of the last chapter, where he declares that the figure of Joan with the martyr’s crown upon her head shall stand for patriotism through all time.

The idyllic picture of Joan’s childhood with her playmates around the fairy tree is so rare in its delicacy and reality that any attempt to recall it here would disturb its bloom.  The little poem, “L’Arbre fee de Bourlemont,” Mark Twain’s own composition, is a perfect note, and that curiously enough, for in versification he was not likely to be strong.  Joan’s girlhood, the picture of her father’s humble cottage, the singing there by the wandering soldier of the great song of Roland which stirred her deepest soul with the love of France, Joan’s heroism among her playmates, her wisdom, her spiritual ideals-are not these all reverently and nobly told, and with that touch of tenderness which only Mark Twain could give?  And the story of her voices, and her march, and of her first appearance before the wavering king.  And then the great coronation scene at Rheims, and the dramatic moment when Joan commands the march on Paris —­the dragging of the hopeless trial, and that last, fearful day of execution, what can surpass these?  Nor must we forget those charming, brighter moments where Joan is shown just as a human being, laughing until the tears run at the absurdities of the paladin or the simple home prattle of her aged father and uncle.  Only here and there does one find a touch—­and it is never more than that—­of the forbidden thing, the burlesque note which was so likely to be Mark Twain’s undoing.

It seems incredible to-day that any reader, whatever his preconceived notions of the writer might have been, could have followed these chapters without realizing their majesty, and that this tale of Joan was a book such as had not before been written.  Let any one who read it then and doubted, go back and consider it now.  A surprise will await him, and it will be worth while.  He will know the true personality of Joan of Arc more truly than ever before, and he will love her as the author loved her, for “the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable child the ages have produced.”