"He saw the Maid fulfil all her promises. She raised the siege of
Orléans, had the king consecrated at Rheims, and then declared that her
mission was accomplished and asked as a boon that she be permitted to
return home.

"Now I should say that as a result of such an association Gilles's
mysticism began to soar. Henceforth we have to deal with a man who is
half-freebooter, half-monk. Moreover--"

"Pardon the interruption, but I am not so sure that Jeanne d'Arc's
intervention was a good thing for France."

"Why not?"

"I will explain. You know that the defenders of Charles were for the
most part Mediterranean cut-throats, ferocious pillagers, execrated by
the very people they came to protect. The Hundred Years' War, in effect,
was a war of the South against the North. England at that epoch had not
got over the Conquest and was Norman in blood, language, and tradition.
Suppose Jeanne d'Arc had stayed with her mother and stuck to her
knitting. Charles VII would have been dispossessed and the war would
have come to an end. The Plantagenets would have reigned over England
and France, which, in primeval times before the Channel existed, formed
one territory occupied by one race, as you know. Thus there would have
been a single united and powerful kingdom of the North, reaching as far
as the province of Languedoc and embracing peoples whose tastes,
instincts, and customs were alike. On the other hand, the coronation of
a Valois at Rheims created a heterogeneous and preposterous France,
separating homogeneous elements, uniting the most incompatible
nationalities, races the most hostile to each other, and identifying