Her own face was transfigured as she spoke.  The light shone upon it all the time that she knelt before the high altar in the Cathedral, rapt in a mystery of thanksgiving and heavenly joy.  O how real it all was to her—­those things which were to us articles of faith, grounds of hope, yet matters which seemed too far above us to arouse that personal rapture which was shining from the eyes and irradiating the whole face of the Maid.

It was a beautiful beginning to the day; and all the early hours were spent by the Maid in meditation and prayer within the walls of the Cathedral, where the people flocked, as perhaps they had never done before, to give thanks for the mercies received with the advent of the Maid, and to gaze upon her, as she knelt in a trance of rapture and devotion in her appointed place not far from the altar.  We, her knights, went to and fro, some of us always near to her, that the crowd might not too curiously press upon her when she went forth, or disturb her devotions by too close an approach.

I noted that none of the Generals appeared or took part in the acts of devotion that day.  And as I issued forth into the sunny street at the close of the High Mass, Bertrand met me with a look of trouble and anger on his face.

“They are all sitting in council of war together,” he said, “and they have not even told her of it, nor suffered her to join them!  How can they treat her so—­even Dunois and La Hire—­when they have seen again and yet again how futile are all plans made by their skill without the sanction of her voice?  It makes my gorge rise!  Do they think her a mere beautiful image, to ride before them and carry a white banner to affright the foe?  It is a shame, a shame, that they should treat her so, after all that they have seen and heard!”

I was as wroth as Bertrand, and as full of surprise.  Even now, looking back after all these years, the blindness of these men of war astonishes and exasperates me.  They had seen with their own eyes what the Maid could accomplish; again and again she had proved herself the abler in counsel as in fight; and yet they now deliberately desired to set her aside from their councils, and only inform her of their decisions when made, and permit her to take a share in the fighting they had planned.

Bertrand was furiously angry.  He led me up into a lofty turret which commanded a bird’s-eye view of the whole city and its environs, and he pointed out that which the Maid had declared she would straightway do, so soon as the Feast of the Ascension was over, and how the Generals were about to follow a quite different course.

Orleans, as all men know, lies upon the right—­the north—­bank of the Loire, and the country to the north was then altogether in the power of the English; wherefore they had built their great bastilles around the city upon that side without molestation, and were able to receive supplies from their countrymen without let or hindrance.