Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume I

by Mark Twain

A nationality and a kingdom were at stake there, and no more time to decide it in than it takes to hard-boil an egg. It was the most momentous ten minutes that the clock has ever ticked in France, or ever will.

and a splintered helmet flew like eggshells, and the skull that carried it had learned its manners and would offend the French no more.

Why, one might live a thousand years and never see so gorgeous a thing as that again.

a pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as that. "Ah, God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful spectacle. She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate tears although one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her with a coarse name three days before, when she had sent him a message asking him to surrender.

the whole city of Orleans was one red flame of bonfires, and the heavens blushed with satisfaction to see it;

Why, those acres of people that we plowed through shed tears enough to raise the river; there was not a face in the glare of those fires that hadn't tears streaming down it; and if Joan's feet had not been protected by iron they would have kissed them off of her.

Orleans will never forget the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is Joan of Arc's day—and holy. (1) (1)It is still celebrated every year with civic and military pomps and solemnities.—TRANSLATOR.

The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the crowds poured. They swarmed about the English bastilles like an invasion of ants, but noisier than those creatures, and carried off the artillery and stores, then turned all those dozen fortresses into monster bonfires, imitation volcanoes whose lofty columns of thick smoke seemed supporting the arch of the sky.

At the present day this poor thing is called Charles the Victorious, on account of victories which other people won for him, but in our time we had a private name for him which described him better, and was sanctified to him by personal deserving—Charles the Base.

on his head he had a tall felt thing like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush of stiff hair stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the bottom, so that the cap and the hair together made the head like a shuttlecock.

when we know a thing we have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it.

You could see the indolent King shrink, in his butterfly clothes.

Leave this silken idleness for the rude contact of war? None of these butterflies desired that. They passed their jeweled comfit-boxes one to another and whispered their content in the head butterfly's practical prudence.