the troops, and that they might break up, instead of fulfilling her mission.  Dunois was urgent for her to go herself at once into Orleans, with such portion of the convoy as boats might be able to transport thither without delay.  “Orleans,” said he, “would count it for nought, if they received the victuals without the Maid.”  Joan decided to go:  the captains of her division promised to rejoin her at Orleans; she left them her chaplain, Pasquerel, the priests who accompanied him, and the banner around which she was accustomed to muster them; and she herself, with Dunois, La Hire, and two hundred men-at-arms, crossed the river at the same time with a part of the supplies.

[Illustration:  JOAN ENTERING ORLEANS——­104]

The same day, at eight P. M., she entered the city, on horseback, completely armed, preceded by her own banner, and having beside her Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most distinguished burgesses of Orleans who had gone out to meet her.  The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, carrying torches, and greeting her arrival “with joy as great as if they had seen God come down amongst them.  They felt,” says the Journal of the Siege, “all of them recomforted and as it were disbesieged by the divine virtue which they had been told existed in this simple maid.”  In their anxiety to approach her, to touch her, one of their lighted torches set fire to her banner.  Joan disengaged herself with her horse as cleverly as it could have been done by the most skilful horseman, and herself extinguished the flame.  The crowd attended her to the church whither she desired to go first of all to render thanks to God, and then to the house of John Boucher, the Duke of Orleans’s treasurer, where she was received together with her two brothers and the two gentlemen who had been her guides from Vaucouleurs.  The treasurer’s wife was one of the most virtuous city dames in Orleans, and from this night forth her daughter Charlotte had Joan for her bedfellow.  A splendid supper had been prepared for her; but she would merely dip some slices of bread in wine and water.  Neither her enthusiasm nor her success, the two greatest tempters to pride in mankind, made any change in her modesty and simplicity.

The very day after her arrival she would have liked to go and attack the English in their bastilles, within which they kept themselves shut up.  La Hire was pretty much of her opinion; but Dunois and the captains of the garrison thought they ought to await the coming of the troops which had gone to cross the Loire at Blois, and the supports which several French garrisons in the neighborhood had received orders to forward to Orleans.  Joan insisted.  Sire de Gamaches, one of the officers present, could not contain himself.  “Since ear is given,” said he, “to the advice of a wench of low degree rather than to that of a knight like me, I will not bandy more words; when the time comes, it shall be my sword that will