She is going to appoint him, and we are to go there and do him homage. Come along!”
But the Paladin was afraid to go, so we left him.
When we presently stood in the presence, in front of a crowd of glittering officers of the army, Joan greeted us with a winning smile, and said she appointed all of us to places in her household, for she wanted her old friends by her. It was a beautiful surprise to have ourselves honored like this when she could have had people of birth and consequence instead, but we couldn’t find our tongues to say so, she was become so great and so high above us now. One at a time we stepped forward and each received his warrant from the hand of our chief, D’Aulon. All of us had honorable places; the two knights stood highest; then Joan’s two brothers; I was first page and secretary, a young gentleman named Raimond was second page; Noel was her messenger; she had two heralds, and also a chaplain and almoner, whose name was Jean Pasquerel. She had previously appointed a maitre d’hotel and a number of domestics. Now she looked around and said:
“But where is the Paladin?”
The Sieur Bertrand said:
“He thought he was not sent for, your Excellency.”
“Now that is not well. Let him be called.”
The Paladin entered humbly enough. He ventured no farther than just within the door. He stopped there, looking embarrassed and afraid. Then Joan spoke pleasantly, and said:
“I watched you on the road. You began badly, but improved. Of old you were a fantastic talker, but there is a man in you, and I will bring it out.” It was fine to see the Paladin’s face light up when she said that. “Will you follow where I lead?”
“Into the fire!” he said; and I said to myself, “By the ring of that, I think she has turned this braggart into a hero. It is another of her miracles, I make no doubt of it.”
“I believe you,” said Joan. “Here—take my banner. You will ride with me in every field, and when France is saved, you will give it me back.”
He took the banner, which is now the most precious of the memorials that remain of Joan of Arc, and his voice was unsteady with emotion when he said:
“If I ever disgrace this trust, my comrades here will know how to do a friend’s office upon my body, and this charge I lay upon them, as knowing they will not fail me.”
Chapter 11.
The War March Is Begun
Noel and I went back together—silent at first, and impressed.
Finally Noel came up out of his thinkings and said:
“The first shall be last and the last first—there’s authority for this surprise. But at the same time wasn’t it a lofty hoist for our big bull!”
“It truly was; I am not over being stunned yet. It was the greatest place in her gift.”
“Yes, it was. There are many generals, and she can create more; but there is only one Standard-Bearer.”
“True. It is the most conspicuous place in the army, after her own.”
“And the most coveted and honorable. Sons of two dukes tried to get it, as we know. And of all people in the world, this majestic windmill carries it off. Well, isn’t it a gigantic promotion, when you come to look at it!”
“There’s no doubt about it. It’s a kind of copy of Joan’s own in miniature.”
“I don’t know how to account for it—do you?”
“Yes—without any trouble at all—that is, I think I do.”
Noel was surprised at that, and glanced up quickly, as if to see if I was in earnest. He said:
“I thought you couldn’t be in earnest, but I see you are. If you can make me understand this puzzle, do it. Tell me what the explanation is.”
“I believe I can. You have noticed that our chief knight says a good many wise things and has a thoughtful head on his shoulders. One day, riding along, we were talking about Joan’s great talents, and he said, ‘But, greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.’ I said, like an unthinking fool, ‘The seeing eye?—I shouldn’t count on that for much—I suppose we all have it.’ ‘No,’ he said; ‘very few have it.’ Then he explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn’t indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldn’t detect. He said the mightiest military genius must fail and come to nothing if it have not the seeing eye—that is to say, if it cannot read men and select its subordinates with an infallible judgment. It sees as by intuition that this man is good for strategy, that one for dash and daredevil assault, the other for patient bulldog persistence, and it appoints each to his right place and wins, while the commander without the seeing eye would give to each the other’s place and lose. He was right about Joan, and I saw it. When she was a child and the tramp came one night, her father and all of us took him for a rascal, but she saw the honest man through the rags. When I dined with the governor of Vaucouleurs so long ago, I saw nothing in our two knights, though I sat with them and talked with them two hours; Joan was there five minutes, and neither spoke with them nor heard them speak, yet she marked them for men of worth and fidelity, and they have confirmed her judgment. Whom has she sent for to take charge of this thundering rabble of new recruits at Blois, made up of old disbanded Armagnac raiders, unspeakable hellions, every one? Why, she has sent for Satan himself—that is to say, La Hire—that military hurricane, that godless swashbuckler, that lurid conflagration of blasphemy, that Vesuvius of profanity, forever in eruption. Does he know how to deal with that mob of roaring devils? Better than any man that lives; for he is the head devil of this world his own self, he is the match of the whole of them combined, and probably the father of most of them. She places him in temporary command until she can get to Blois herself—and then! Why, then she will certainly take them in hand personally, or I don’t know her as well as I ought to, after all these years of intimacy. That will be a sight to see—that fair spirit in her white armor, delivering her will to that muck-heap, that rag-pile, that abandoned refuse of perdition.”
“La Hire!” cried Noel, “our hero of all these years—I do want to see that man!”
“I too. His name stirs me just as it did when I was a little boy.”
“I want to hear him swear.”
“Of course, I would rather hear him swear than another man pray. He is the frankest man there is, and the naivest. Once when he was rebuked for pillaging on his raids, he said it was nothing. Said he, ‘If God the Father were a soldier, He would rob.’ I judge he is the right man to take temporary charge there at Blois. Joan has cast the seeing eye upon him, you see.”
“Which brings us back to where we started. I have an honest affection for the Paladin, and not merely because he is a good fellow, but because he is my child—I made him what he is, the windiest blusterer and most catholic liar in the kingdom. I’m glad of his luck, but I hadn’t the seeing eye. I shouldn’t have chosen him for the most dangerous post in the
