Its renown dates back from the early days of our Plantagenets, when they lived in the old fortress above its dwellings:  how Henry III. died of a broken heart, and the fame of Rabelais, will ever be associated with the ancient castle and town.  Still, the deathless interest of Chinon is owing to the residence of the Maid of Domremy—­as one has a better right to call her than of Orleans—­in those early days of her short career, in its burgh and castle.  In or near the street La Haute Rue Saint Maurice, hard by a square which now bears the name of the heroine, Joan of Arc arrived at noon on Sunday, the 6th of March.

It would be interesting to know in which of the old gabled houses Joan resided during the two days before she was admitted to enter the castle.  Local tradition reports that she dwelt with a good housewife (’chez une bonne femme’).  According to a contemporary plan of Chinon, dated 1430, a house which belonged to a family named La Barre was where she lodged; and although the actual house of the La Barres cannot be identified, there are many houses in the street of Saint Maurice old enough to have witnessed the advent of the Maid on that memorable Sunday in the month of March 1430.  Few French towns are so rich in the domestic architecture of the better kind dating from the early part of the fifteenth century as that of Chinon; and now that Rouen, Orleans, and Poitiers have been so terribly modernised, a journey to Chinon well repays the trouble.  Little imagination is required to picture the street with its crowd of courtiers and Court hangers-on, upon their way to and from the castle above; so mercifully have time and that far greater destroyer of things of yore dealt with this old thoroughfare.

Two days elapsed before Joan was admitted to the presence of the King.  A council had been summoned in the castle to determine whether the Maid should be received by the monarch.  The testimony of the knights who had accompanied the Maid from Vaucouleurs carried the day in her favour.

While waiting to see the King, we have from Joan’s own lips a description of how her time was passed.  ’I was constantly at prayers in order that God should send the King a sign.  I was lodging with a good woman when that sign was given him, and then I was summoned to the King.’

The church in which she passed her time in prayer was doubtless that of Saint Maurice, close by the place at which she lodged.  It owed its origin to Henry II. of England; it is a rare and beautiful little building of good Norman architecture, but much defaced by modern restoration.  Its age is marked by the depth at which its pavement stands, the ground rising many feet above its present level.