whom, it will be remembered, Joan first took into her confidence regarding her voices and her mission.  Laxart was then in his sixtieth year.  At the close of his evidence he states that all he had said regarding his niece he had also told Charles VII.—­probably at the time of the coronation, for Laxart was then at Rheims.  Laxart was followed by the couple with whom Joan of Arc lodged when living at Vaucouleurs, Henry and Joan le Royer (or le Charron).  After this worthy pair appeared the two brave knights who had guarded the Maid of Orleans during her perilous journey to Chinon—­John de Novelem-hont, commonly called John de Metz, aged fifty-seven, and the other, named Bertrand de Poulangy—­one of the King’s esquires—­aged sixty-three.

Three other knights were heard after them—­namely, Albert d’Ourche, from Ourche, near Commercy, aged sixty; Geoffrey du Fay, aged fifty; and Louis de Martigny, living at Martigny-les-Gerboneaux, a village near Neufchateau, aged fifty-four.  These were followed by two curates and a sergeant.  ‘Discrete personne Messire Jean le Fumeux,’ of Vaucouleurs, canon of the Church of Sainte Marie in that village, also curate of the parish church of d’Ugny, aged only thirty-eight, was, as he admitted, a mere child when Joan of Arc came to Vaucouleurs; but he remembered distinctly having seen her praying in the church at Vaucouleurs, and kneeling for a long time in the subterranean chapel of Sainte Marie’s Church before an image of the Blessed Virgin.

The other priest, named John Colin, was the curate of the parish church of Domremy, and a canon of the collegiate church of Saint Nicolas de Brixey, near Vaucouleurs.  His age was sixty-six.  The last of these thirty-four witnesses was the sergeant, Guillot Jacquier, aged thirty-six:  why he was called as a witness does not appear.  As a child he had heard Joan of Arc spoken of as ’une brave fille, de bonne renommee, et de conduite honnete,’ which opinion was the general one given in their evidence by all the other witnesses, whose names only we have been able to give.

Relating to the period in the life of the heroine between the time of the King’s coronation and that of her capture, the facts told by the various persons examined are few and far between.  In the trial for the rehabilitation of the Maid of Orleans, the story of her deeds in the field was not of much importance to the commissioners.  What they principally desired to ascertain was the fact that no taint of heresy could attach to the life of the heroine.  It was for this reason that all those persons who could throw any light upon Joan’s early days and the actions of her childhood had been collected to give their evidence.  We now come to those witnesses who were examined regarding the life of Joan of Arc after her interview with the King at Chinon and about the stirring events which immediately followed that interview.  The first of these is the ’nobile et savant homme Messire Simon Charles,’ Master