She “pricks” for sheriffs.  Joanna pricked for a king.  But observe the difference:  our own lady pricks for two men out of three; Joanna for one man out of three hundred.  Happy Lady of the islands and the orient!—­she can go astray in her choice only by one half; to the extent of one half she must have the satisfaction of being right.  And yet, even with these tight limits to the misery of a boundless discretion, permit me, liege Lady, with all loyalty, to submit—­that now and then you prick with your pin the wrong man.  But the poor child from Domremy, shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court—­not because dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that were more so,) but because some of them wore a scoffing smile on their features—­how should she throw her line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as kings in dress?  Nay, even more than any true king would have done:  for, in Southey’s version of the story, the Dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin’s magnetic sympathy with royalty,

  ——­“on the throne,
  I the while mingling with the menial throng,
  Some courtier shall he seated.”

This usurper is even crowned:  “the jeweled crown shines on a menial’s head.”  But really, that is “un peu fort;” and the mob of spectators might raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the Dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason.  For the Dauphin could not lend more than belonged to him.  According to the popular notion, he had no crown for himself, but, at most, a petit ecu, worth thirty pence; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims.  This was the popular notion in France.  The same notion as to the indispensableness of a coronation prevails widely in England.  But, certainly, it was the Dauphin’s interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of Joanna.  For, if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him beyond Orleans?  And above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by celerity above his competitor the English boy?  Now was to be a race for a coronation:  he that should win that race, carried the superstition of France along with him.  Trouble us not, lawyer, with your quillets.  We are illegal blockheads; so thoroughly without law, that we don’t know even if we have a right to be blockheads; and our mind is made up—­that the first man drawn from the oven of coronation at Rheims, is the man that is baked into a king.  All others are counterfeits, made of base Indian meal, damaged by sea-water.