“I would the help had come sooner, my General,” spoke the Maid; “but soon or late it is one with my Lord, who will give us the promised victory.”

From that moment friendship, warm and true, was established betwixt the bronzed warrior and the gentle Maid, who took up, as by natural right, her position of equal—­indeed, of superior—­in command, not with any haughty assumption, not with any arrogant words or looks, but sweetly and simply, as though there were no question but that the place was hers; that to her belonged the ordering of the forces, the overlooking of all.  Again and again, even we, who had come to believe so truly in her divine commission, were astonished at the insight she showed, the sagacity of her counsels, the wonderful authority she was able to exert over the soldiers brought together, a rude, untrained, insubordinate mass of men, collected from all ranks and classes of the people, some being little better than bands of marauders, living on prey and plunder, since of regular fighting there had been little of late; others, mercenaries hired by the nobles to swell their own retinues; many raw recruits, fired by ardour at the thought of the promised deliverance; a few regular trained bands, with their own officers in command, but forming altogether a heterogeneous company, by no means easy to drill into order, and swelled by another contingent at Blois, of very much the same material.

But the Maid assembled the army together, and thus addressed them.  At least, this was the substance of her words; nothing can reproduce the wonderful earnestness and power of her voice and look, for her face kindled as she spoke, and the sunshine playing upon her as she sat her charger in the glory of her silver armour, seemed to encompass her with a pure white light, so that men’s eyes were dazzled as they looked upon her, and they whispered one to the other: 

“The Angelic Maid!  The Angelic Maid! surely it is an Angel of God come straight down from Heaven to aid and lead us.”

“My friends,” she spoke, and her voice carried easily to every corner of the great square, packed with a human mass, motionless, hanging upon her words; “My friends, we are about to start forth upon a crusade as holy as it is possible for men to be concerned in, for it is as saviours and deliverers of your brethren and our country that we go; and the Lord of Hosts is with us.  He has bidden us march, and He has promised to go with us, even as He was with the Israelites of old.  And if we do not see His presence in pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, we yet do know and feel Him near us; and He will give abundant proof that He fights upon our side!”

She lifted her face for a moment to the sky.  She was bareheaded, and every head was bared in that vast crowd as she uttered the name of the Most High.  It seemed as though a light from Heaven fell upon her as she spoke, and a deep murmur ran through the throng.  It was as if they answered that they needed no other vision than that of the Maid herself.