“I think it is wonderful, the way he has brought us through.”
“Who?” asked Jean.
“Why, the Paladin.”
The Paladin seemed not to hear.
“What had he to do with it?” asked Pierre d’Arc.
“Everything. It was nothing but Joan’s confidence in his discretion that enabled her to keep up her heart. She could depend on us and on herself for valor, but discretion is the winning thing in war, after all; discretion is the rarest and loftiest of qualities, and he has got more of it than any other man in France—more of it, perhaps, than any other sixty men in France.”
“Now you are getting ready to make a fool of yourself, Noel Rainguesson,” said the Paladin, “and you want to coil some of that long tongue of yours around your neck and stick the end of it in your ear, then you’ll be the less likely to get into trouble.”
“I didn’t know he had more discretion than other people,” said Pierre, “for discretion argues brains, and he hasn’t any more brains than the rest of us, in my opinion.”
“No, you are wrong there. Discretion hasn’t anything to do with brains; brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels. Perfect discretion means absence of brains. Discretion is a quality of the heart—solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through feeling. We know this because if it were an intellectual quality it would only perceive a danger, for instance, where a danger exists; whereas—”
“Hear him twaddle—the damned idiot!” muttered the Paladin.