CAUCHON. They will be the worse for remembering me: they will see in me evil triumphing over good, falsehood over truth, cruelty over mercy, hell over heaven. Their courage will rise as they think of you, only to faint as they think of me. Yet God is my witness I was just: I was merciful: I was faithful to my light: I could do no other than I did. CHARLES [_scrambling out of the sheets and enthroning himself on the side of the bed_] Yes: it is always you good men that do the big mischiefs. Look at me! I am not Charles the Good, nor Charles the Wise, nor Charles the Bold. Joan’s worshippers may even call me Charles the Coward because I did not pull her out of the fire. But I have done less harm than any of you. You people with your heads in the sky spend all your time trying to turn the world upside down; but I take the world as it is, and say that top-side-up is right-side-up; and I keep my nose pretty close to the ground. And I ask you, what king of France has done better, or been a better fellow in his little way? JOAN. Art really king of France, Charlie? Be the English gone? DUNOIS [_coming through the tapestry on Joan’s left, the candles relighting themselves at the same moment, and illuminating his armor and surcoat cheerfully_] I have kept my word: the English are gone. JOAN. Praised be God! now is fair France a province in heaven. Tell me all about the fighting, Jack. Was it thou that led them? Wert thou God’s captain to thy death? DUNOIS. I am not dead. My body is very comfortably asleep in my bed at Chateaudun; but my spirit is called here by yours. JOAN. And you fought them my way, Jack: eh? Not the old way, chaffering for ransoms; but The Maid’s way: staking life against death, with the heart high and humble and void of malice, and nothing counting under God but France free and French. Was it my way, Jack? DUNOIS. Faith, it was any way that would win. But the way that won was always your way. I give you best, lassie. I wrote a fine letter to set you right at the new trial. Perhaps I should never have let the priests burn you; but I was busy fighting; and it was the Church’s business, not mine. There was no use in both of us being burnt, was there? CAUCHON. Ay! put the blame on the priests. But I, who am beyond praise and blame, tell you that the world is saved neither by its priests nor its soldiers, but by God and His Saints. The Church Militant sent this woman to the fire; but even as she burnt, the flames whitened into the radiance of the Church Triumphant. _The clock strikes the third quarter. A rough male voice is heard trolling an improvised tune._ [Illustration: A short tune, in musical notation.] Rum tum trumpledum, Bacon fat and rumpledum, Old Saint mumpledum, Pull his tail and stumpledum, O my Ma-ry Ann! _A ruffianly English soldier comes through the curtains and marches between Dunois and Joan._