crossed with
them and went home.

Just as usual, we found the town in a fury of joy, all the bells
clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went
out or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one
of these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There
had been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the
past seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all
the more relish on that account.

Chapter 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend

TO GET away from the usual crowd of visitors and have a rest, Joan
went with Catherine straight to the apartment which the two occupied
together, and there they took their supper and there the wound was
dressed. But then, instead of going to bed, Joan, weary as she was, sent
the Dwarf for me, in spite of Catherine's protests and persuasions. She
said she had something on her mind, and must send a courier to Domremy
with a letter for our old Pere Fronte to read to her mother. I came,
and she began to dictate. After some loving words and greetings to her
mother and family, came this:

"But the thing which moves me to write now, is to say that when you
presently hear that I am wounded, you shall give yourself no concern
about it, and refuse faith to any that shall try to make you believe it
is serious."

She was going on, when Catherine spoke up and said:

"Ah, but it will fright her so to read these words. Strike them out,
Joan, strike them out, and wait only one day--two days at most--then write
and say your foot was wounded but is well again--for it surely be well
then, or very near it. Don't distress her, Joan; do as I say."

A laugh like the laugh of the old days, the impulsive free laugh of an
untroubled spirit, a laugh like a chime of bells, was Joan's answer;
then she said:

"My foot? Why should I write about such a scratch as that? I was not
thinking of it, dear heart."

"Child, have you another wound and a worse, and have not spoken of it?
What have you been dreaming about, that you--"

She had jumped up, full of vague fears, to have the leech called back at
once, but Joan laid her hand upon her arm and made her sit down again,
saying:

"There, now, be tranquil, there is no other wound, as yet; I am writing
about one which I shall get when we storm that bastille tomorrow."

Catherine had the look of one who is trying to understand a puzzling
proposition but cannot