was vindicated, to having often seen her kneeling before an image of the Virgin.  This image, a battered and rude one, still exists.  Nothing less artistic can be imagined; but no one, be his religious views what they may, be his abhorrence of Mariolatry as strong as that of a Calvinist, if he have a grain of sympathy in his nature for what is glorious in patriotism and sublime in devotion, can look on that battered and broken figure without a feeling deeper than one of ordinary curiosity.

A short time before leaving Vaucouleurs, Joan made a visit into Lorraine—­a visit which proved how early her fame had spread abroad.  The then reigning Duke of that province, Charles II. of Lorraine, an aged and superstitious prince, had heard of the mystic Maid of Domremy, and he had expressed his wish to see her, probably thinking that she might afford him relief from the infirmities from which he suffered.  Whatever the reason may have been, he sent her an urgent request to visit him, a message with which Joan at once complied.

Accompanied by Jean de Metz, Joan went to Toul, and thence with her cousin, Durand Laxart, she proceeded to Nancy.  Little is known of her deeds while there.  She visited Duke Charles, and gave him some advice as to how he should regain his character more than his health, over which she said she had no control.  The old Duke appears to have been rather a reprobate, but whether he profited by Joan’s advice does not appear.

Possibly this rather vague visit of the Maid’s to Nancy was undertaken as a kind of test as to how she would comport herself among dukes and princes.  That she showed most perfect modesty of bearing under somewhat difficult circumstances seems to have struck those who were with her at Nancy.  She also showed practical sagacity; for she advised Duke Charles to give active support to the French King, and persuaded him to allow his son-in-law, young Rene of Anjou, Duke of Bar, to enter the ranks of the King’s army, and even to allow him to accompany her to the Court at Chinon.  By this she bound the more than lukewarm Duke of Lorraine to exert all his influence on the side of King Charles.

Before leaving Nancy on her return to Vaucouleurs, Joan visited a famous shrine, not far from the capital, dedicated to St. Nicolas, after which she hastened back to Vaucouleurs to make ready for an immediate start for Chinon.

Joan’s equipment for her journey to Chinon was subscribed for by the people of Vaucouleurs; for among the common folk there, as wherever she was known, her popularity was great.  She seems to have won in every instance the hearts of the good simple peasantry, the poorer classes in general, called by a saintly King of France the ’common people of our Lord,’ who believed in her long before others of the higher classes and the patricians were persuaded to put any faith in her.  To the peasantry Joan was already the maiden pointed out in the old prophecy then known all over France, which said that the country would be first lost by a woman and then recovered by a maiden hailing from Lorraine.  The former was believed to be the Queen-mother, who had sided with the English; Joan, the Maid out of Lorraine who should save France, and by whose arm the English would be driven out of the country.