hope of a blessing.  Thus my kind nurse ended, calling herself my lady’s sister in the love of France and of the Maid, and bidding my lady be mindful of so true a lover, who lay sick for a token at her hands.  These letters she sealed, and intrusted to Colet de Vienne, the royal messenger, the same who rode from Vaucouleurs to Chinon, in the beginning of the Maid’s mission, and who, as then, was faring to Tours with letters from Orleans.

Meanwhile all the town was full of joy, in early June, because the Maid was to visit the city, with D’Alencon and the Bastard, on her way to besiege Jargeau.  It was June the ninth, in the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and twenty-nine, the sun shining warm in a clear blue sky, and all the bells of Orleans a-ringing, to welcome back the Maiden.  I myself sat in the window, over the doorway, alone with Charlotte sitting by my side, for her father had gone to the Hotel de Ville, with her mother, to welcome the captains.  Below us were hangings of rich carpets, to make the house look gay, for every house was adorned in the best manner, and flags floated in the long street, and flowers strewed the road, to do honour to our deliverer.  Thus we waited, and presently the sound of music filled the air, with fragrance of incense, for the priests were walking in front, swinging censers and chanting the Te Deum laudamus.  And then came a company of girls strewing flowers, and fair boys blowing on trumpets, and next, on a black horse, in white armour, with a hucque of scarlet broidered with gold, the blessed Maid herself, unhelmeted, glancing every way with her happy eyes, while the women ran to touch her armour with their rings, as to a saint, and the men kissed her mailed feet.

To be alive, and to feel my life returning in a flood of strength and joy in that sweet air, with the gladness of the multitude pulsing through it as a man’s heart beats in his body, seemed to me like Paradise.  But out of Paradise our first parents were driven long ago, as anon I was to be from mine.  For, as the Maid passed, I doffed my cap and waved it, since to shout “Noel” with the rest, I dared not, because of my infirmity.  Now, it so fell that, glancing around, she saw and knew me, and bowed to me, with a gesture of her hand, as queenly as if she, a manant’s child, had been a daughter of France.  At that moment, noting the Maid’s courtesy towards me, Charlotte stood up from beside me, with a handful of red roses, which she threw towards her.  As it chanced, belike because she was proud to be with one whom the Maid honoured, or to steady herself as she threw, she laid her left hand about my neck, and so standing, cast her flowers, and then looked laughing back into my eyes, with a happy face.  The roses missed the Maid, whose horse caracoled at that moment as she went by, but they lit in the lap of a damsel that rode at her rein, on a lyart {28} palfrey, and she looking up, I saw the face of Elliot, and Elliot saw me, and saw Charlotte leaning on me and laughing.  Then Elliot’s face grew deadly pale, her lower lip stiff, as when she was angered with me at Chinon, and so, wrying her neck suddenly to the left, she rode on her way, nor ever looked towards us again.