The delight of the children took another form.  To some of the younger ones seven months was a sort of lifetime.  They had forgotten what grass was like, and the velvety green meadows seemed paradise to their surprised and happy eyes after the long habit of seeing nothing but dirty lanes and streets.  It was a wonder to them—­those spacious reaches of open country to run and dance and tumble and frolic in, after their dull and joyless captivity; so they scampered far and wide over the fair regions on both sides of the river, and came back at eventide weary, but laden with flowers and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh country air and the vigorous exercise.

After the burnings, the grown folk followed Joan from church to church and put in the day in thanksgivings for the city’s deliverance, and at night they feted her and her generals and illuminated the town, and high and low gave themselves up to festivities and rejoicings.  By the time the populace were fairly in bed, toward dawn, we were in the saddle and away toward Tours to report to the King.

That was a march which would have turned any one’s head but Joan’s.  We moved between emotional ranks of grateful country-people all the way.  They crowded about Joan to touch her feet, her horse, her armor, and they even knelt in the road and kissed her horse’s hoof-prints.

The land was full of her praises.  The most illustrious chiefs of the church wrote to the King extolling the Maid, comparing her to the saints and heroes of the Bible, and warning him not to let “unbelief, ingratitude, or other injustice” hinder or impair the divine help sent through her.  One might think there was a touch of prophecy in that, and we will let it go at that; but to my mind it had its inspiration in those great men’s accurate knowledge of the King’s trivial and treacherous character.

The King had come to Tours to meet Joan.  At the present day this poor thing is called Charles the Victorious, on account of victories which other people won for him, but in our time we had a private name for him which described him better, and was sanctified to him by personal deserving—­Charles the Base.  When we entered the presence he sat throned, with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him.  He looked like a forked carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt thing like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush of stiff hair stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the bottom, so that the cap and the hair together made the head like a shuttlecock.  All the materials of his dress were rich, and all the colors brilliant.  In his lap he cuddled a miniature greyhound that snarled,