THE PROFESSOR STOOD BEFORE IT IN AN ECSTATIC MOOD.
“Who was Joan of Arc, anyway?” said he. “A dreamy sort of a girl who thought she had a mission. There were no lecture courses in France in that day, and no lecture bureaus. Had there been such a vent for her inspiration she would have been an Anna Dickinson No. 1. She would have gone about France lecturing for anywhere from one hundred and fifty to three hundred and fifty dollars a night, and would have made a pile of money, and bought a place in fee simple for her father, and got a lot of money in bonds; that’s what she would have done. But there were no such facilities for genius at that time, and so she put on armor, and led soldiers, and won victories, and finally was burned at the stake for a witch. I don’t see anything special to craze over in Joan. I’m going back to the café and put in the time before the train leaves in literary pursuits. I’ll write a letter to my mother. It’s a thousand pities that we didn’t go straight on to Paris, instead of stopping in this infernal old hole. We might have got there in time to go to the Mabille to-night. But it will be too late by the time we get there.”
THE CATHEDRALS.
And Tibbitts left us and returned to the café and we went on. There is nothing in Rouen that is not interesting. Sunday as it was, the sidewalks in front of the numberless cafés were occupied with chairs, the white-aproned waiters flitting hither and thither, serving their customers with the light wines of the country; the market was in full blast, and business was going on the same as any other day. There is no Sunday in France, that is as Americans understand the day.
Due honor having been done to Joan of Arc, we entered a narrow, crooked thoroughfare, spanned by an old arch, built hundreds of years ago to mark the spot where a peasant named Rouen built the first house, erected on the site that was destined to play such an important part in the subsequent history of the country.