of the best names in France filled it to overflowing. The peasant girl from Domremy in the hose and doublet of a servant, a little travel-worn after her tedious journey, was led in by one of those splendid seigneurs, dazzled with the grandeur she had never seen before, looking about her in wonder to see which was the King—while Charles, perhaps with boyish pleasure in the mystification, perhaps with a little half-conviction stealing over him that there might be something more in it, stood among the smiling crowd.
The young stranger looked round upon all those amused, light-minded, sceptical faces, and without a moment's hesitation went forward and knelt down before him. "Gentil Dauphin," she said, "God give you good life." "But it is not I that am the King; there is the King," said Charles. "Gentil Prince, it is you and no other," she said; then rising from her knee: "Gentil Dauphin, I am Jeanne the Maid. I am sent to you by the King of Heaven to tell you that you shall be consecrated and crowned at Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King of France." The little masquerade had failed, the jest was over. There would be little more laughing among the courtiers, when they saw the face of Charles grow grave. He took the new-comer aside, perhaps to that deep recess of the window where in the darkening night the glimmer of the clear, flowing river, the great vault of sky would still be visible dimly, outside the circle of the blazing interior with all its smoky lights.
Charles VII. of France was, like many of his predecessors, a pauvre Sire enough. He had thought more of his amusements than of the troubles of his country; but a wild and senseless gaiety will sometimes spring from despair as well as from lightness of heart; and after all, the dread responsibility, the sense that in all his helplessness and inability to do anything he was still the man who ought to do all, would seem to have moved him from time to time. A secret doubt in his heart, divulged to no man, had added bitterness to the conviction of his own weakness. Was he indeed the heir of France? Had he any right to that sustaining confidence which would have borne up his heart in the midst of every discouragement? His very mother had given him up and set him aside. He was described as the so-called Dauphin in treaties signed by Charles and Isabeau his parents. If anyone knew, she knew; and was it possible that more powerful even than the English, more cruel than the Burgundians, this stain of illegitimacy was upon him, making all effort vain? There is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man's heart, and little worthy as was this King, the story we are here told has a thrill of truth in it. It is reported by a certain Sala, who declares that he had it from the lips of Charles's favourite and close follower, the Seigneur de Boisi, a courtier who, after the curious custom of the time, shared even the bed of his master. This was confided to Boisi by the King in the deepest confidence, in the silence of the wakeful night:
"This was in the time of the good King Charles, when he knew not what step to take, and did nothing but think how to redeem his life: for as I have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. The King in this extreme thought, went in one morning to his oratory all alone; and there he made a prayer to our Lord, in his heart, without pronouncing any words, in which he asked of Him devoutly that if he were indeed the true heir, descended from the royal House of France, and that justly the kingdom was his, that He would be pleased to guard and defend him, or at the worst to give him grace to escape into Spain or Scotland, whose people, from all antiquity, were brothers-in-arms, friends and allies of the kings of France, and that he might find a refuge there."
Perhaps there is some excuse for a young man's endeavour to forget himself in folly or even in dissipation when his secret thoughts are so despairing as these.
It was soon after this melancholy moment that the arrival of Jeanne took place. The King led her aside, touched as all were, by her look of perfect sincerity and good faith; but it is she herself, not Charles, who repeats what she said to him. "I have to tell you," said the young messenger of God, "on the part of my Lord (Messire) that you are the true heir of France and the son of the King; He has sent me to conduct you to Rheims that you may receive your consecration and your crown,"—perhaps here, Jeanne caught some look which she did not understand in his eyes, for she adds with, one cannot but think a touch of sternness—"if you will."
Was it a direct message from God in answer to his prayer, uttered within his own heart, without words, so that no one could have guessed that secret? At least it would appear that Charles thought so: for how should this peasant maid know the secret fear that had gnawed at his heart? "When thou wast in the garden under the fig-tree I saw thee." Great was the difference between the Israelite without guile and the troubled young man, with whose fate the career of a great nation was entangled; but it is not difficult to imagine what the effect must have been on the mind of Charles when he was met by this strange, authoritative statement, uttered like all that Jeanne said, de la part de Dieu.
The impression thus made, however, was on Charles alone, and he was surrounded by councillors, so much the more pedantic and punctilious as they were incapable, and placed amidst pressing necessities with which in themselves they had no power to cope. It may easily be allowed, also, that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young King on the word of a peasant girl was in itself, according to every law of reason, madness and folly. She would seem to have had the women on her side always and at every point. The Church did not stir, or else was hostile; the commanders and military men about, regarded with scornful disgust the idea that an enterprise which they considered hopeless should be confided to an ignorant woman—all with perfect reason we are obliged to allow. Probably it was to gain time—yet without losing the aid of such a stimulus to the superstitious among the masses—and to retard any rash undertaking—that it was proposed to subject Jeanne to an examination of doctors and learned men touching her faith and the character of her visions, which all this time had been of continual recurrence, yet charged with no further revelation, no mystic creed, but only with the one simple, constantly repeated command.
Accordingly, after some preliminary handling by half a dozen bishops, Jeanne was taken to Poitiers—where the university and the local parliament, all the learning, law, and ecclesiastical wisdom which were on the side of the King, were assembled—to undergo this investigation. It is curious that the entire history of this wildest and strangest of all visionary occurrences is to be found in a series of processes at law, each part recorded and certified under oath; but so it is. The village maid was placed at the bar, before a number of acute legists, ecclesiastics, and statesmen, to submit her to a not-too-benevolent cross-examination. Several of these men were still alive at the time of the Rehabilitation and gave their recollections of this examination, though its formal records have not been preserved. A Dominican monk, Aymer, one of an order she loved, addressed her gravely with the severity with which that institution is always credited. "You say that God will deliver France; if He has so determined, He has no need of men-at-arms." "Ah!" cried the girl, with perhaps a note of irritation in her voice, "the men must fight; it is God who gives the victory." To another discomfited Brother, Jeanne, exasperated, answered with a little roughness, showing that our Maid, though gentle as a child to all gentle souls, was no piece of subdued perfection, but a woman of the fields, and lately much in the company of rough-spoken men. He was of Limoges, a certain Brother Seguin, "bien aigre homme," and disposed apparently to weaken the trial by questions without importance: he asked her what language her celestial visitors spoke? "Better than yours," answered the peasant girl. He could not have been, as we say in Scotland, altogether "an ill man," for he acknowledged that he spoke the patois of his district, and therefore that the blow was fair. But perhaps for the moment he was irritated too. He asked her, a question equally unnecessary, "do you believe in God?" to which with more and more impatience she made a similar answer: "Better than you do." There was nothing to be made of one so well able to defend herself. "Words are all very well," said the monk, "but God would not have us believe you, unless you show us some sign." To this Jeanne made an answer more dignified, though still showing signs of exasperation, "I have not come to Poitiers to give signs," she said; "but take me to Orleans—I will then show the signs I am sent to show. Give me as small a band as you please, but let me go."
The situation of Orleans was at the time a desperate one. It was besieged by a strong army of English, who had built a succession of towers round the city, from which to assail it, after the manner of the times. The town lies in the midst of the plain of the Loire, with not so much as a hillock to offer any advantage to the besiegers. Therefore these great works were necessary in face of a very strenuous