Leaving the now free and happy town to jubilate in its deliverance from the enemy, Joan of Arc went by Blois and Tours to Chinon.  At Tours the King had come to meet the Maid.  When within sight of the King, Joan dismounted and knelt before him.  Charles came forward bareheaded to meet her, and embraced her on the cheek; and, to use the words of the chronicler, made her ‘grande chere’.  It was on this occasion that the King bestowed on Joan of Arc the badge of the Royal Lily of France to place in her coat-of-arms.  The cognizance consisted of a sword supporting a royal crown, with the fleur-de-lis on either side.

Joan now strongly urged the King to lose no time, but at once go to Rheims, to be crowned.  The fact of his being crowned and proclaimed King of France would add infinitely to his prestige and authority; he would then no longer be a mere Dauphin or King of Bourges, as the English and Burgundians styled him.  But now Joan found how many at Court were lukewarm.  The council summoned to deliberate on her proposal alleged that the King’s powers and purse would not enable him to make so long and hazardous an expedition.  Joan used every argument in favour of setting out forthwith for Rheims:  she declared that the time given to her for carrying out her mission was short, and, according to the Duke of Alencon’s testimony, she said that after the King was crowned she would deliver the Duke of Orleans from his captivity in England, but that she had only one year in which to accomplish this task; and therefore she prayed that there might be no delay in starting for Rheims.

Charles was now staying at the Castle of Loches, that gloomy prison-fortress whose dungeons were to become so terribly notorious in the succeeding reign.  Joan, whose impatience for action carried her beyond the etiquette of the Court, entered on one occasion into the King’s private apartment, where the feeble and irresolute monarch was consulting with his confessor the Bishop of Castres, Christophe d’Harcourt, and Robert de Macon.  Kneeling, the Maid said:—­

’Noble Dauphin, hold not such long and so many councils, but start at once for Rheims, and there receive your crown.’

‘Do your voices inspire this advice?’ asked the King’s confessor.

‘Yes,’ was the answer, ‘and with vehemence.’

‘Then,’ said the Bishop, ’will you not tell us in the King’s presence in what way your voices communicate with you?’

To this Jesuitical query, Joan, in her simple and straightforward manner, answered the priest, that when she met with people who doubted the truth of her mission she would retire to her room and pray, and then voices returned and spoke to her:—­’Go forward, daughter of God, and we will assist you,’ and how hearing those voices and those words she would rejoice and take courage, and only long that her then state of happiness might last always.  While telling them these things she seemed a being transformed, surrounded by a something Divine and holy.