‘How long have they been in communication with you?’

‘I have been under their protection seven years,’ was the answer.

Joan had referred to the succour which she had received from Saint Michel.  On being asked which of these saints was the first to appear to her, she said it was the last named.  She had seen him, she said, as clearly as she saw Beaupere, and that he was not by himself, but in a company of angels.  When he left her she felt miserable, and longed to have been taken with the flight of angels.

When Beaupere asked her if it was her own idea to come into France, Joan replied in the affirmative, and also that she would sooner have been torn to pieces by horses than have come without the will of God.

‘Does He,’ asked the priest, ’tell you not to wear the man’s dress? and had not Baudricourt,’ he added, ’wished she should dress as a man?’

She said it was not by man’s but by God’s orders that she wore the dress of a man.

The questions again turned upon the vision and the voice.

Had an angel appeared above the head of the King at Chinon?

She answered that when she entered the King’s presence, three hundred soldiers stood in the hall, and fifty torches burnt in the great hall of the castle, and that without counting the spiritual light within.

She was then asked respecting her examination before the clergy at Poitiers.

‘They believed,’ Joan answered, ’that there was nothing in me against matters of religion.’

Then Beaupere asked the prisoner if she had visited Sainte Catherine de Fierbois.

‘Yes,’ she answered; ’I heard mass there twice in one day, on my way to Chinon.’

‘How did you communicate your message to the King?’

’I sent a letter asking him if I might be allowed to see him.  That I had come one hundred and fifty miles to bring him assistance, and that I had much to do for him.  I think,’ she added, ’that I also said I should know him amongst all those who might be present.’

‘Did you then wear a sword?’ asked Beaupere.

‘I had one that I had taken at Vaucouleurs.’

‘Had you not another one as well?’

’Yes; I had sent to the church of Fierbois, either from Troyes or Chinon, for a sword from the back of the altar of Sainte Catherine.  It was found, much rusted.’

‘How did you know there was a sword there?’

’Through my voices.  I asked in a letter that the sword should be given me, and the clergy sent me it.  It lay underground—­I am not certain whether at the front or at the back of the altar.  It was cleaned by the people belonging to the church.  They had a scabbard made for me; also one was made at Tours—­one of velvet, the other of black cloth.  I had also a third one for the Fierbois sword made of very strong leather.’

‘Were you wearing that sword,’ asked Beaupere, ’when you were captured?’