The Days of Jeanne Darc

eature, so old that age had given him up and delivered him again to the lithe activities of youth. He seemed made of steel springs. His joints and muscles did not sag when he walked. The skin was so tightly stretched across the bones of his large features that it scarcely wrinkled, but, deepening its brown, became like mummy husk, with points of fire surviving in the lively eyes. What few shreds of hair he had clung in forgotten strands to the skull; but these were seldom seen, for Choux wore always a red woolen cap tied under the chin like a woman's. This was as much a part of him as the red sash girdling his clothes around the middle. He wore it indoors and out, to mass and to bed. When Mengette saw that the cap would have to be renewed, she made another, and standing behind the bench while he ate, put it over the one he wore. Choux let the strings hang down unheeded until he was alone. Whatever became of the first cap, whether he secretly burned it or buried it in the earth, it was never seen again. One pair of clean strings soon appeared under his chin, and Mengette drew a breath of relief. But it was not so easy to get his garments from his body. Choux's instinct was that an animal's covering ought to shed naturally. He exhaled a hyena-like odor, and when on a February day he sat by the chimney, Mengette was thankful for its wide throat. Domremy was not too sensitive to smells. Chickens and geese lived in the streets, and manure-heaps ripened beside the front...