stic noble and soldier, cheerfully
contemptuous, receiving, with a loud laugh into all the echoes, the
extraordinary demand that he should send a little girl from Domremy
to the King, to deliver France, come before us like a picture in the
countryman's simple words. Robert de Baudricourt would scarcely hear the
story out. "Box her ears," he said, "and send her home to her mother."
The little fool! What did she know of the English, those brutal,
downright fighters, against whom no _elan_ was sufficient, who stood
their ground and set up vulgar posts around their lines, instead
of trusting to the rush of sudden valour, and the tactics of the
tournament! She deliver France! On a much smaller argument and to put
down a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has bidden
a young fanatic's ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion,
and has often been justified in so doing. There would be a half hour of
gaiety after poor Laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal. The
good man must have turned back to Jeanne, where she waited for him in
courtyard or antechamber, with a heavy heart. No boxing of ears was
possible to him. The mere thought of it was blasphemy. This was on
Ascension Day the 13 May, 1428.

Jeanne, however, was not discouraged by M. de Baudricourt's joke, and
her interview with him changed his views completely. She appears indeed
from the moment of setting out from her father's house to have taken a
new attitude. These great personages of the country before whom all the
peasants trembled, were nothing to this village maid, except, perhaps,
instruments in the hand of God to speed her on her way if they could see
their privileges--if not, to be swept out of it like straws by the wind.
It had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father's house; but after
that disruption what did anything matter? And she had gone through five
years of gradual training of which no one knew. The tears and terror,
the plea, "I am a poor girl; I cannot even ride," of her first childlike
alarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices and
their meaning. They were now her familiar friends guiding her at every
step; and what was the commonplace burly Seigneur, with his roar of
laughter, to Jeanne? She went to her audience with none of the alarm
of the peasant. A certain young man of Baudricourt's suite, Bertrand de
Poulengy, another young D'Artagnan seeking his fortune, was present
in the hall and witness