Anyhow from any point of view, in the hopeless condition of affairs, it was expedient that nothing which gave promise of help, either real or visionary, should lightly be rejected.  There was much anxiety no doubt in the careless Court still dancing and singing in the midst of calamity, but the reception of the ambitious peasant would form an exciting incident at least, if nothing more important and notable.

Thus the whole anxious world of France stirred round that youthful figure in the little frontier town, repeating with many an alteration and exaggeration the sayings of Jeanne, and those popular superstitions about the Maid from Lorraine which might be so naturally applied to her.  It would seem, indeed, that she had herself attached some importance to this prophecy, for both her uncle Laxart and her hostess at Vaucouleurs report that she asked them if they had heard it:  which question “stupefied” the latter, whose mind evidently jumped at once to the conviction that the prophecy was fulfilled.  Not in Domremy itself, however, were these things considered with the same awe-stricken and admiring faith.  Nothing had softened the mood of Jacques d’Arc.  It was a shame to the village prud’ homme to think of his daughter away from all the protection of home, living among men, encountering the young Seigneurs who cared for no maiden’s reputation, hearing the soldiers’ rude talk, exposed to their insults, or worse still to their kindness.  Probably even now he thought of her as surrounded by troopers and men-at-arms, instead of the princes and peers with whom henceforth Jeanne’s lot was to be cast; but in the former case there would have perhaps been less to fear than in the latter.  Anyhow, Jeanne’s communications with her family were more painful to her than had been the jeers of Baudricourt or the exorcism of the cure.  They sent her angry orders to come back, threats of parental curses and abandonment.  We may hope that the mother, grieved and helpless, had little to do with this persecution.  The woman who had nourished her children upon saintly legend and Scripture story could scarcely have been hard upon the child, of whom she, better than any, knew the perfect purity and steadfast resolution.  One of the little household at least, revolted by the stern father’s fury, perhaps secretly encouraged by the mother, broke away and joined his sister at a later period.  But we hear, during her lifetime, little or nothing of Pierre.

Much time, however, was passed in these preliminaries.  The final start was not made till the 23d February, 1429, when the permission is supposed to have come by the hands of Colet de Vienne, the King’s messenger, who attended by a single archer, was to be her escort.  It is possible that he had no mission to this effect, but he certainly did escort her to Chinon.  The whole town gathered before the house of Baudricourt to see her depart.  Baudricourt, however, does not seem to have provided any guard