brutal, downright fighters, against whom no elan was sufficient, who stood their ground and set up vulgar posts around their lines, instead of trusting to the rush of sudden valour, and the tactics of the tournament!  She deliver France!  On a much smaller argument and to put down a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has bidden a young fanatic’s ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion, and has often been justified in so doing.  There would be a half hour of gaiety after poor Laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal.  The good man must have turned back to Jeanne, where she waited for him in courtyard or antechamber, with a heavy heart.  No boxing of ears was possible to him.  The mere thought of it was blasphemy.  This was on Ascension Day the 13 May, 1428.

Jeanne, however, was not discouraged by M. de Baudricourt’s joke, and her interview with him changed his views completely.  She appears indeed from the moment of setting out from her father’s house to have taken a new attitude.  These great personages of the country before whom all the peasants trembled, were nothing to this village maid, except, perhaps, instruments in the hand of God to speed her on her way if they could see their privileges—­if not, to be swept out of it like straws by the wind.  It had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father’s house; but after that disruption what did anything matter?  And she had gone through five years of gradual training of which no one knew.  The tears and terror, the plea, “I am a poor girl; I cannot even ride,” of her first childlike alarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices and their meaning.  They were now her familiar friends guiding her at every step; and what was the commonplace burly Seigneur, with his roar of laughter, to Jeanne?  She went to her audience with none of the alarm of the peasant.  A certain young man of Baudricourt’s suite, Bertrand de Poulengy, another young D’Artagnan seeking his fortune, was present in the hall and witnessed the scene.  The joke would seem to have been exhausted by the time Jeanne appeared, or her perfect gravity and simplicity, and beautiful manners—­so unlike her rustic dress and village coif—­imposed upon the Seigneur and his little court.  This is how the story is told, twenty-five years after, by the witness, then an elderly knight, recalling the story of his youth.

“She said that she came to Robert on the part of her Lord, that he should send to the Dauphin, and tell him to hold out, and have no fear, for the Lord would send him succour before the middle of Lent.  She also said that France did not belong to the Dauphin but to her Lord; but her Lord willed that the Dauphin should be its King, and hold it in command, and that in spite of his enemies she herself would conduct him to be consecrated.  Robert then asked her who was this Lord?  She answered, ’The King of Heaven.’  This being done (the witness adds) she returned to her father’s house with her uncle, Durand Laxart of Burey le Petit.”