Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain (fiction book recommendations txt) π

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The essential facts regarding Joan of Arc are well known. A young teenage girl hears voices that tell her she will deliver France from Englandβs oppression during the Hundred Years War. She manages to take her message to the dauphin, who after some persuasion places her at the head of his army. That army promptly lifts the siege of OrlΓ©ans, throws the English out of the Loire valley, hands them another significant defeat at Patay, and marches all the way to Reims, where the dauphin is crowned King Charles VII. After an ill-advised and short-lived truce, Joan is captured by the BurgundiansβFrench nobility who have aligned themselves with the Englishβand they try her for heresy and burn her at the stake.
Twain first became fascinated with Joan as a teenager. When he finally decided to write a book about her, he researched it for a dozen years and spent two more years writing it. It was, in his words, βthe best of all my books,β and became his last finished novel. Although a work of fiction, Twainβs research was time well spent: the known facts of Joanβs life, and especially the trial, are very accurate in their depiction. To tell Joanβs story, Twain invented a memoirist, Louis de Conte, a fictionalized version of her real-life page, Louis de Contes. Twain has the fictional de Conte grow up with Joan, and so he is able to tell her story from her early childhood all the way through the trial and execution. The result is the story of one of the great women in history told by one of historyβs great storytellers.
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- Author: Mark Twain
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βInto the fire!β he said; and I said to myself, βBy the ring of that, I think she has turned this braggart into a hero. It is another of her miracles, I make no doubt of it.β
βI believe you,β said Joan. βHereβ βtake my banner. You will ride with me in every field, and when France is saved, you will give it me back.β
He took the banner, which is now the most precious of the memorials that remain of Joan of Arc, and his voice was unsteady with emotion when he said:
βIf I ever disgrace this trust, my comrades here will know how to do a friendβs office upon my body, and this charge I lay upon them, as knowing they will not fail me.β
XI The War March Is BegunNoΓ«l and I went back togetherβ βsilent at first, and impressed. Finally NoΓ«l came up out of his thinkings and said:
βThe first shall be last and the last firstβ βthereβs authority for this surprise. But at the same time wasnβt it a lofty hoist for our big bull!β
βIt truly was; I am not over being stunned yet. It was the greatest place in her gift.β
βYes, it was. There are many generals, and she can create more; but there is only one Standard-Bearer.β
βTrue. It is the most conspicuous place in the army, after her own.β
βAnd the most coveted and honorable. Sons of two dukes tried to get it, as we know. And of all people in the world, this majestic windmill carries it off. Well, isnβt it a gigantic promotion, when you come to look at it!β
βThereβs no doubt about it. Itβs a kind of copy of Joanβs own in miniature.β
βI donβt know how to account for itβ βdo you?β
βYesβ βwithout any trouble at allβ βthat is, I think I do.β
NoΓ«l was surprised at that, and glanced up quickly, as if to see if I was in earnest. He said:
βI thought you couldnβt be in earnest, but I see you are. If you can make me understand this puzzle, do it. Tell me what the explanation is.β
βI believe I can. You have noticed that our chief knight says a good many wise things and has a thoughtful head on his shoulders. One day, riding along, we were talking about Joanβs great talents, and he said, βBut, greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.β I said, like an unthinking fool, βThe seeing eye?β βI shouldnβt count on that for muchβ βI suppose we all have it.β βNo,β he said; βvery few have it.β Then he explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didnβt indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye couldnβt detect. He said the mightiest military genius must fail and come to nothing if it have not the seeing eyeβ βthat is to say, if it cannot read men and select its subordinates with an infallible judgment. It sees as by intuition that this man is good for strategy, that one for dash and daredevil assault, the other for patient bulldog persistence, and it appoints each to his right place and wins, while the commander without the seeing eye would give to each the otherβs place and lose. He was right about Joan, and I saw it. When she was a child and the tramp came one night, her father and all of us took him for a rascal, but she saw the honest man through the rags. When I dined with the governor of Vaucouleurs so long ago, I saw nothing in our two knights, though I sat with them and talked with them two hours; Joan was there five minutes, and neither spoke with them nor heard them speak, yet she marked them for men of worth and fidelity, and they have confirmed her judgment. Whom has she sent for to take charge of this thundering rabble of new recruits at Blois, made up of old disbanded Armagnac raiders, unspeakable hellions, every one? Why, she has sent for Satan himselfβ βthat is to say, La Hireβ βthat military hurricane, that godless swashbuckler, that lurid conflagration of blasphemy, that Vesuvius of profanity, forever in eruption. Does he know how to deal with that mob of roaring devils? Better than any man that lives; for he is the head devil of this world his own self, he is the match of the whole of them combined, and probably the father of most of them. She places him in temporary command until she can get to Blois herselfβ βand then! Why, then she will certainly take them in hand personally, or I donβt know her as well as I ought to, after all these years of intimacy. That will be a sight to seeβ βthat fair spirit in her white armor, delivering her will to that muck-heap, that rag-pile, that abandoned refuse of perdition.β
βLa Hire!β cried NoΓ«l, βour hero of all these yearsβ βI do want to see that man!β
βI too. His name stirs me just as it did when I was a little boy.β
βI want to hear him swear.β
βOf course, I would rather hear him swear than another man pray. He is the frankest man there is, and the naivest. Once when he was rebuked for pillaging on his raids, he said it was nothing. Said he, βIf God the Father were a soldier, He would rob.β I judge he is the right man to take temporary charge there at Blois. Joan has cast the seeing eye upon him, you see.β
βWhich brings us back to where we started. I have an honest affection for the Paladin, and not merely because he is a good fellow, but because he is my childβ βI made him what he is, the
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