n is shown just as a human being, laughing
until the tears run at the absurdities of the paladin or the simple home
prattle of her aged father and uncle. Only here and there does one find
a touch--and it is never more than that--of the forbidden thing, the
burlesque note which was so likely to be Mark Twain's undoing.

It seems incredible to-day that any reader, whatever his preconceived
notions of the writer might have been, could have followed these
chapters without realizing their majesty, and that this tale of Joan was
a book such as had not before been written. Let any one who read it then
and doubted, go back and consider it now. A surprise will await him, and
it will be worth while. He will know the true personality of Joan of Arc
more truly than ever before, and he will love her as the author loved
her, for "the most innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable child
the ages have produced."

The tale is matchless in its workmanship. The quaint phrasing of the
old Sieur de Conte is perfectly adapted to the subject-matter, and the
lovely character of the old narrator himself is so perfectly maintained
that we find ourselves all the time as in an atmosphere of consecration,
and feel that somehow we are helping him to weave a garland to lay on
Joan's tomb. Whatever the tale he tells, he is never more than a step
away. We are within sound of his voice, we can touch his presence; we
ride with him into battle; we laugh with him in the by-play and humors
of warfare; we sit hushed at his side through the long, fearful days of
the deadly trial, and when it is all ended it is to him that we turn to
weep for Joan--with him only would we mingle our tears. It is all bathed
in the atmosphere of romance, but it is the ultimate of realism, too;
not hard, sordid, ugly realism, but noble, spiritual, divine realism,
belonging to no particular class or school--a creation apart. Not all of
Mark Twain's tales have been convincing, but there is no chapter of his
Joan that we doubt. We believe it all happened--we know that it must
have happened, for our faith in the Sieur de Conte never for an instant
wavers.

Aside from the personality of the book--though, in truth, one never
is aside from it--the tale is a marvel in its pageantry, its splendid
panorama and succession of stirring and stately scenes. The fight before
Orleans, the taking of the Tourelles and of Jargeau, all the movement of
that splendid march to Rheims, there are few