“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