These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domrémy stood upon the frontiers; and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_ race representing the _cis_ and the _trans_. A river (it is true) formed the boundary line at this point--the river Meuse; and _that_, in old days, might have divided the populations; but in these days it did not--there were bridges, there were ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for travellers, that were few, as for armies that were too many by half. These two roads, one of which was the great high road between France and Germany, _decussated_ at this very point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large X, in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ of conflux for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's geographical education, by showing him to a hair's breadth where it was that Domrémy stood. These roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk arteries between two mighty realms,[4] and haunted for ever by wars or rumors of wars, decussated (for anything I know to the contrary) absolutely under Joanna's bed-room window; one rolling away to the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the other unaccountably preferring (but there's no disputing about tastes) to sweep round that odious man's odious pigstye to the left. Things being situated as is here laid down, viz. in respect of the decussation, and in respect of Joanna's bed-room; it follows that, if she had dropped her glove by accident from her chamber window into the very bull's eye of the target, in the centre of X, not one of several great potentates could (though all animated by the sincerest desires for the peace of Europe) have possibly come to any clear understanding on the question of whom the glove was meant for. Whence the candid reader perceives at once the necessity for at least four bloody wars. Falling indeed a little farther, as, for instance, into the pigstye, the glove could not have furnished to the most peppery prince any shadow of excuse for arming: he would not have had a leg to stand upon in taking such a perverse line of conduct. But, if it fell (as by the hypothesis it did) into the one sole point of ground common to four kings, it is clear that, instead of no leg to stand upon, eight separate legs would have had no ground to stand upon unless by treading on each other's toes. The philosopher, therefore, sees clearly the necessity of a war, and regrets that sometimes nations do not wait for grounds of war so solid.