I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back.

Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret.

And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time.

I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms.

Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought.