mentioned the Maid; and was going on to say how she out of her good heart
would prize and praise this compassionate deed which he was about to-- It
was as far as he got. The Burgundian burst into his smooth oration with
an insult leveled at Joan of Arc. We sprang forward, but the Dwarf, his
face all livid, brushed us aside and said, in a most grave and earnest
way:

"I crave your patience. Am not I her guard of honor? This is my affair."

And saying this he suddenly shot his right hand out and gripped the great
Burgundian by the throat, and so held him upright on his feet. "You have
insulted the Maid," he said; "and the Maid is France. The tongue that
does that earns a long furlough."

One heard the muffled cracking of bones. The Burgundian's eyes began to
protrude from their sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy.
The color deepened in his face and became an opaque purple. His hands
hung down limp, his body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed
its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf took away his hand
and the column of inert mortality sank mushily to the ground.

We struck the bonds from the prisoner and told him he was free. His
crawling humbleness changed to frantic joy in a moment, and his ghastly
fear to a childish rage. He flew at that dead corpse and kicked it, spat
in its face, danced upon it, crammed mud into its mouth, laughing,
jeering, cursing, and volleying forth indecencies and bestialities like a
drunken fiend. It was a thing to be expected; soldiering makes few
saints. Many of the onlookers laughed, others were indifferent, none was
surprised. But presently in his mad caperings the freed man capered
within reach of the waiting file, and another Burgundian promptly slipped