what place?” “I know not,” said she, “for I am at the will of God.”  Then she added, “I have accomplished that which my Lord commanded me, to raise the siege of Orleans and have the gentle king crowned.  I would like it well if it should please him to send me back to my father and mother, to keep their sheep and their cattle, and do that which was my wont.”  “When the said lords,” says the chronicler, an eye-witness, “heard these words of Joan, who, with eyes towards heaven, gave thanks to God, they the more believed that it was somewhat sent from God, and not otherwise.”

Historians, and even contemporaries, have given much discussion to the question whether Joan of Arc, according to her first ideas, had really limited her design to the raising of the siege of Orleans and the coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims.  She had said so herself several times, just as she had to Dunois at Rheims on the 17th of July, 1429; but she sometimes also spoke of more vast and varied projects, as, for instance, driving the English completely out of France, and withdrawing from his long captivity Charles, Duke of Orleans.  He had been a prisoner in London ever since the battle of Agincourt, and was popular in his day, as he has continued to be in French history, on the double ground of having been the father of Louis XII. and one of the most charming poets in the ancient literature of France.  The Duke d’Alencon, who was so high in the regard of Joan, attributed to her more expressly this quadruple design:  “She said,” according to him, “that she had four duties; to get rid of the English, to have the king anointed and crowned, to deliver Duke Charles of Orleans, and to raise the siege laid by the English to Orleans.”  One is inclined to believe that Joan’s language to Dunois at Rheims in the hour of Charles VII.’s coronation more accurately expressed her first idea; the two other notions occurred to her naturally in proportion as her hopes as well as her power kept growing greater with success.  But however lofty and daring her soul may have been, she had a simple and not at all a fantastic mind.  She may have foreseen the complete expulsion of the English, and may have desired the deliverance of the Duke of Orleans, without having in the first instance premeditated anything more than she said to Dunois during the king’s coronation at Rheims, which was looked upon by her as the triumph of the national cause.

However that may be, when Orleans was relieved, and Charles VII. crowned, the situation, posture, and part of Joan underwent a change.  She no longer manifested the same confidence in herself and her designs.  She no longer exercised over those in whose midst she lived the same authority.  She continued to carry on war, but at hap-hazard, sometimes with and sometimes without success, just like La Hire and Dunois; never discouraged, never satisfied, and never looking upon her-self as triumphant.  After the coronation, her advice was to march at once upon Paris, in order