sed from the right bank
to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for travellers, that
were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, one of
which was the great high road between France and Germany, _decussated_ at
this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St.
Andrew's cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large
X, in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ of conflux for
these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education,
by showing him to a hair's breadth where it was that Domremy stood. These
roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty
realms,[4] and haunted for ever by wars or rumors of wars, decussated (for
anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bed-room window;
one rolling away to the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the
other unaccountably preferring (but there's no disputing about tastes) to
sweep round that odious man's odious pigstye to the left.

Things being situated as is here laid down, viz. in respect of the
decussation, and in respect of Joanna's bed-room; it follows that, if she
had dropped her glove by accident from her chamber window into the very
bull's eye of the target, in the centre of X, not one of several great
potentates could (though all animated by the sincerest desires for the
peace of Europe) have possibly come to any clear understanding on the
question of whom the glove was meant for. Whence the candid reader
perceives at once the necessity for at least four bloody wars. Falling
indeed a little farther, as, for instance, into the pigstye, the glove
could not have furnished to the most peppery prince any shadow of excuse
for arming: he would not have had a leg to stand upon in taking such a
perverse line of conduct. But, if it fell (as by the hypothesis it did)
into the one sole point of ground common to four kings, it is clear that,
instead of no leg to stand upon, eight separate legs would have had
no ground to stand upon unless by treading on each other's toes. The
philosopher, therefore, sees clearly the necessity of a war, and regrets
that sometimes nations do not wait for grounds of war so solid.

In the circumstances supposed, though the four kings might be unable to
see their way clearly without the help of gunpowder to any decision upon
Joanna's intention, she--poor thing!--never could mistake her intentions
for