Good news travels fast, sometimes, as well as bad.
By the time we were ready to start homeward by the
bridge the whole city of Orleans was one red flame
of bonfires, and the heavens blushed with satisfaction
to see it; and the booming and bellowing of cannon
and the banging of bells surpassed by great odds anything
that even Orleans had attempted before in the way
of noise.
When we arrived—well, there is no describing
that. Why, those acres of people that we plowed
through shed tears enough to raise the river; there
was not a face in the glare of those fires that hadn’t
tears streaming down it; and if Joan’s feet
had not been protected by iron they would have kissed
them off of her. “Welcome! welcome to the
Maid of Orleans!” That was the cry; I heard
it a hundred thousand times. “Welcome to
our Maid!” some of them worded it.
No other girl in all history has ever reached such
a summit of glory as Joan of Arc reached that day.
And do you think it turned her head, and that she
sat up to enjoy that delicious music of homage and
applause? No; another girl would have done that,
but not this one. That was the greatest heart
and the simplest that ever beat. She went straight
to bed and to sleep, like any tired child; and when
the people found she was wounded and would rest, they
shut off all passage and traffic in that region and
stood guard themselves the whole night through, to
see that he slumbers were not disturbed. They
said, “She has given us peace, she shall have
peace herself.”
All knew that that region would be empty of English
next day, and all said that neither the present citizens
nor their posterity would ever cease to hold that
day sacred to the memory of Joan of Arc. That
word has been true for more than sixty years; it will
continue so always. Orleans will never forget
the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it.
It is Joan of Arc’s day—and holy.
[1]
[1] It is still celebrated every year with civic and
military pomps and solemnities. — Translator.
In the earliest dawn of morning, Talbot
and his English forces evacuated their bastilles and
marched away, not stopping to burn, destroy, or carry
off anything, but leaving their fortresses just as
they were, provisioned, armed, and equipped for a
long siege. It was difficult for the people to
believe that this great thing had really happened;
that they were actually free once more, and might
go and come through any gate they pleased, with none
to molest or forbid; that the terrible Talbot, that
scourge of the French, that man whose mere name had
been able to annul the effectiveness of French armies,
was gone, vanished, retreating—driven away
by a girl.
The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the
crowds poured. They swarmed about the English
bastilles like an invasion of ants, but noisier than
those creatures, and carried off the artillery and
stores, then turned all those dozen fortresses into
monster bonfires, imitation volcanoes whose lofty
columns of thick smoke seemed supporting the arch
of the sky.
