ncy, united with her angelic gentleness, that drove the fanatic
English soldier--who had sworn to throw a fagot on her scaffold as his
tribute of abhorrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow--suddenly
to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that he had seen a
dove rising upon wings to heaven from the ashes where she had stood?
What else drove the executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to
his share in the tragedy? And if all this were insufficient, then I
cite the closing act of her life as valid on her behalf, were all
other testimonies against her. The executioner had been directed to
apply his torch from below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose up in
billowy columns. A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her
side. Wrapt up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but still
persisted in his prayers. Even then when the last enemy was racing up
the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did this noblest of
girls think only for him, the one friend that would not forsake her,
and not for herself; bidding him with her last breath to care for his
own preservation, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest
breath ascended in this sublime expression of self-oblivion, did not
utter the word recant either with her lips or in her heart. No, she
did not, tho one should rise from the dead to swear it.

III

CHARLES LAMB[28]

It sounds paradoxical, but is not so in a bad sense, to say that in
every literature of large compass some authors will be found to rest
much of the interest which surrounds them on their essential
non-popularity. They are good for the very reason that they are not in
conformity to the current taste. They interest because to the world
they are not interesting. They attract by means of their repulsion.
Not as tho it could separately furnish a reason for loving a book,
that the majority of men had found it repulsive. _Prima facie_, it
must suggest some presumption _against_ a book that it has failed to
gain public attention. To have roused hostility indeed, to have
kindled a feud against its own principles or its temper, may happen to
be a good sign. That argues power. Hatred may be promising. The
deepest revolutions of minds sometimes begin in hatred. But simply to
have left a reader unimprest is in itself a neutral result, from which
the inference is doubtful. Yet even that, even simple failure to
impress, may happen at times to be a result from positi