“Yes, Jeanne, you shall take that upon you which your country calls upon you to take, which your King puts upon you, which even your saints demand of you, though perchance with no such insistence as before, since that is no longer needed.  Can you think that the mind of the Lord has changed towards me and towards France?  Yet you must know as well as I and my Generals do, that without you to lead them against the foe, the soldiers will waver and tremble, and perchance turn their backs upon our enemies once more.  You they will follow to a man; but will they follow others when they know that you have deserted them?  You tell me to go forward and be of good courage.  How can I do this if you turn back, and take with you the hearts of my men?”

“Sire, I know not that such would be the case,” spoke the Maid gravely.  “You stand amongst them now as their crowned and anointed King.  What need have they of other leader?  They have followed me heretofore, waiting for you; but now—­”

“Now they will want you more than ever, since you have ever led them to victory!” cried the King; and raising his voice and looking about him, especially to those generals and officers of his staff who had seen so much of the recent events of the campaign, he cried out: 

“What say you, gentlemen?  What is our chance to drive away the English and become masters of this realm if the maid of Orleans take herself away from us, and the soldiers no longer see her standard floating before them, or hear her voice cheering them to the battle?”

Some of those present looked sullenly on the ground, unwilling to own that the Maid was a power greater than any other which could be brought into the field; but there were numbers of other and greater men, who had never denied her her meed of praise, though they had thwarted her at times in the council room; and these with one accord declared that should the Maid betake herself back to Domremy, leaving the army to its fate, they would not answer for the effect which this desertion would have, but would, in fact, almost expect the melting away of the great body of the trained soldiers and recruits who had fought with her, and had come to regard her presence with them as the essential to a perfect victory.

But we were destined to have a greater testimony than this, for a whisper of what was passing within the great hall had now filtered forth into the streets, and all in a moment we were aware of a mighty tumult and hubbub without, a clamour of voices louder and more insistent than those which had hailed the King a short time before, and the words which seemed to form themselves out of the clamour and gradually grow into the burden of the people’s cry was the repeated and vehement shout, “The maid of Orleans!  The maid of Orleans!  We will fight if the Maid goes with us—­without her we be all dead men!”