of the Requests (Maitre des requetes) in the year 1429.  He had been president of the State exchequer in 1456, and was aged sixty.  Simon’s evidence is of interest and importance both as regards Joan of Arc’s arrival at Chinon, and also with respect to the siege of Orleans and the triumphant entry into Rheims.  The next witness was one of the clergy who examined Joan when at Poitiers; this was a preaching friar from Limousin who had asked Joan of Arc in what language her saints spoke to her, and had been answered by ’In a better language than yours’—­for this good friar, whose name was Brother Sequier, spoke with a strong Limousin accent.  When he was giving his evidence before the commission (in 1456) he was an old man in his seventy-third year, and head of the theological college of Poitiers.

Next to him came the evidence given by the ’venerable et savant homme Maitre Jean Barbier, docteur es lois.’  Barbier was King’s-Advocate in the House of Parliament, and had also been one of the judges at Joan of Arc’s examination at Poitiers:  he was aged fifty.  Barbier had been at Loches when the people threw themselves before Joan of Arc’s horse, and embraced the heroine’s feet and hands.  Barbier reproved her for allowing them to do so.  He told her that if she permitted them to act thus it would render them idolatrous in their worship of her, to which reprimand Joan answered, ’Indeed, without God’s help I could not prevent them from becoming so.’

Another of the Poitiers witnesses was Gobert Thibault, also aged fifty.  This Thibault had been at Chinon when Joan arrived there, and had followed her to Orleans.  Among these Poitiers witnesses was Francis Garivel, aged forty.  Garivel, when a lad of fifteen, had seen Joan at Poitiers, and he remembered that on her being asked why she styled Charles Dauphin, and not by his kingly title, she replied that she could not give him his regal title until he had been crowned and anointed at Rheims.

The collected testimony of the above witnesses, whose evidence covers the time passed by Joan at Poitiers, was submitted to Charles VII., and the MSS. exist in the National Library in Paris.  It has been edited by the historians Bachon and Quicherat, and translated from the Latin into French by Fabre.

The next batch of witnesses’ evidence concerns the fighting period of Joan of Arc’s life, and consists principally of the testimony given by her companions in her different campaigns, and this appears to us by far the most interesting and curious.

Of those witnesses the first to testify was a prince of the blood, Joan of Arc’s ‘beau Duc,’ as she loved to call John, Duke of Alencon.  He is thus styled in the original document:  ’Illustris ac potentissimus princeps et dominus.’

Alencon came of a truly noble line of ancestors, and was descended also from brave warriors.  His great-grandfather fell at Crecy, leading the vanguard of the French host.  His grandfather was the companion-in-arms of the great Du Guesclin.  His father, on the field of Agincourt, after having wounded the Duke of York and stricken him to the ground, crossed swords with King Harry, and then, overwhelmed by numbers, had fallen under a rain of blows.