“You shall hear how the onfall goes, belike,” they said, “and to-morrow shall be your judgment.”

With that the door grated and rang, the key was turned in the lock, and their iron tread sounded on the stone stairs, going upwards.  The room was high, narrow, and lit by a barred and stanchioned window, far above my reach, even if I had been unbound.  I shame to say it, but I rolled over on my face and wept.  This was the end of my hopes and proud heart.  That they would burn me, despite their threats I scarce believed, for I had in nowise offended Holy Church, or in matters of the Faith, and only for such heretics, or wicked dealers in art-magic, is lawfully ordained the death by fire.  But here was I prisoner, all that I had won at Orleans would do little more than pay my own ransom; from the end of my risk and travail I was now further away than ever.

So I mused, weeping for very rage, but then came a heavy rolling sound overhead, as of moving wheeled pieces of ordnance.  Thereon (so near is Hope to us in our despair) I plucked up some heart.  Ere nightfall, Paris might be in the hands of the King, and all might be well.  The roar and rebound of cannon overhead told me that the fighting had begun, and now I prayed with all my heart, that the Maid, as ever, might again be victorious.  So I lay there, listening, and heard the great artillery bellow, and the roar of guns in answer, the shouting of men, and clang of church bells.  Now and again the walls of the tower rang with the shock of a cannon-ball, once an arrow flew through the casement and shattered itself on the wall above my head.  I scarce know why, but I dragged me to the place where it fell, and, put the arrow-point in my bosom.  Smoke of wood and pitch darkened the light; they had come, then, to close quarters.  But once more rang the rattle of guns; the whizzing rush of stones, the smiting with axe or sword on wooden barrier and steel harness, the cries of war, “Mont joye St. Denis!” “St. George for England!” and slogans too, I heard, as “Bellenden,” “A Home! a Home!” and then I knew the Scots were there, fighting in the front.  But alas, how different was the day when first I heard our own battle-cries under Orleans walls!  Then I had my life and my sword in my hands, to spend and to strike; but now I lay a lonely prisoner, helpless and all but hopeless; yet even so I clashed my chains and shouted, when I heard the slogan.

Thus with noise and smoke, and trumpets blowing the charge or the recall, and our pipes shrieking the pibroch high above the din, with dust floating and plaster dropping from the walls of my cell till I was wellnigh stifled, the day wore on, nor could I tell, in anywise, how the battle went.  The main onslaught, I knew, was not on the gate behind the tower in which I lay, though that tower also was smitten of cannon-balls.

At length, well past mid-day, as I deemed by the light, came a hush, and then a thicker smoke, and taste of burning pitch-wood, and a roar as if all Paris had been blown into mid-air, so that my tower shook, while heavy beams fell crashing to earth.