Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/382

 MARK TWAIN

sible is one to be reverently studied, loved, and mar veled at, but not to be wholly understood and ac counted for by even the most searching analysis.

In Joan of Arc at the age of sixteen there was no promise of a romance. She lived in a dull little vil lage on the frontiers of civilization; she had been no where and had seen nothing; she knew none but simple shepherd folk ; she had never seen a person of note ; she hardly knew what a soldier looked like ; she had never ridden a horse, nor had a warlike weapon in her hand; she could neither read nor write: she could spin and sew ; she knew her catechism and her prayers and the fabulous histories of the saints, and this was all her learning. That was Joan at sixteen. What did she know of law? of evidence? of courts? of the attorney s trade? of legal procedure? Noth ing. Less than nothing. Thus exhaustively equip ped with ignorance, she went before the court at Toul to contest a false charge of breach of promise of marriage; she conducted her cause herself, with out any one s help or advice or any one s friendly sympathy, and won it. She called no witnesses of her own, but vanquished the prosecution by using with deadly effectiveness its own testimony. The astonished judge threw the case out of court, and spoke of her as &quot;this marvelous child.&quot;

She went to the veteran Commandant of Vaucou- leurs and demanded an escort of soldiers, saying she must march to the help of the King of France, since she was commissioned of God to win back his lost kingdom for him and set the crown upon his head. The Commandant said, &quot;What, you? You are only

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