e got to
snuffling, and sort of half sobbing, and went to wiping his eyes with
the sleeves of his doublet. He was so conspicuous that he embarrassed
Noel a little, and also had an ill effect upon the audience. With the
next repetition he broke quite down and began to cry like a calf, which
ruined all the effect and started many to the audience to laughing. Then
he went on from bad to worse, until I never saw such a spectacle; for
he fetched out a towel from under his doublet and began to swab his eyes
with it and let go the most infernal bellowings mixed up with sobbings
and groanings and retchings and barkings and coughings and snortings and
screamings and howlings--and he twisted himself about on his heels and
squirmed this way and that, still pouring out that brutal clamor and
flourishing his towel in the air and swabbing again and wringing it out.
Hear? You couldn't hear yourself think. Noel was wholly drowned out
and silenced, and those people were laughing the very lungs out of
themselves. It was the most degrading sight that ever was. Now I heard
the clankety-clank that plate-armor makes when the man that is in it
is running, and then alongside my head there burst out the most inhuman
explosion of laughter that ever rent the drum of a person's ear, and I
looked, and it was La Hire; and the stood there with his gauntlets on
his hips and his head tilted back and his jaws spread to that degree
to let out his hurricanes and his thunders that it amounted to indecent
exposure, for you could see everything that was in him. Only one thing
more and worse could happen, and it happened: at the other door I
saw the flurry and bustle and bowings and scrapings of officials and
flunkeys which means that some great personage is coming--then Joan
of Arc stepped in, and the house rose! Yes, and tried to shut its
indecorous mouth and make itself grave and proper; but when it saw
the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked God for this mercy and the
earthquake that followed.

Such things make a life of bitterness, and I do not wish to dwell upon
them. The effect of the poem was spoiled.

Chapter 16 The Finding of the Dwarf

THIS EPISODE disagreed with me and I was not able to leave my bed the
next day. The others were in the same condition. But for this, one or
another of us might have had the good luck that fell to the Paladin's
share that day; but it is observable that God in His compassion sends
the good luck to such a