"Personal Recollections Of Joan Of Arc vol 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Joan of Arc)

day, when we were little children together, just as you play with
your mates. Now that we perceive how great she was, now that her
name fills the whole world, it seems strange that what I am saying
is true; for it is as if a perishable paltry candle should speak of the
eternal sun riding in the heavens and say, "He was gossip and
housemate to me when we were candles together." And yet it is
true, just as I say. I was her playmate, and I fought at her side in
the wars; to this day I carry in my mind, fine and clear, the picture
of that dear little figure, with breast bent to the flying horse's neck,
charging at the head of the armies of France, her hair streaming
back, her silver mail plowing steadily deeper and deeper into the
thick of the battle, sometimes nearly drowned from sight by
tossing heads of horses, uplifted sword-arms, wind-blow plumes,
and intercepting shields. I was with her to the end; and when that
black day came whose accusing shadow will lie always upon the
memory of the mitered French slaves of England who were her
assassins, and upon France who stood idle and essayed no rescue,
my hand was the last she touched in life.

As the years and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the
marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France
and its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper
and deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and
wonderful, and divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and
recognize her at last for what she was--the most noble life that was