night before to protect them from the fury of the crowd.  The peculiarity of this promise lay in the fact that the bridge was broken, and could not be passed, even without that difficulty, without passing through the Tourelles and the boulevard which blocked it at the other end.  At the closed gates another great official stood by, to prevent her passing, but he was soon swept away by the flood of enthusiasts who followed the white horse and its white rider.  The crowd flung themselves into the boats to cross the river with her, horse and man.  Les Tourelles stood alone, black and frowning across the shining river in its early touch of golden sunshine, on the south side of the Loire, the lower tower of the boulevard on the bank blackened with the fire of last night’s attack, and the smoking ruins of Les Augustins beyond.  The French army, whom Orleans had been busy all night feeding and encouraging, lay below, not yet apparently moving either for action or retreat.  Jeanne plunged among them like a ray of light, D’Aulon carrying her banner; and passing through the ranks, she took up her place on the border of the moat of the boulevard.  Her followers rushed after with that elan of desperate and uncalculating valour which was the great power of the French arms.  In the midst of the fray the girl’s clear voice, assez voix de femme, kept shouting encouragements, de la part de Dieu always her war-cry. “Bon coeur, bonne esperance,” she cried—­“the hour is at hand.”  But after hours of desperate fighting the spirit of the assailants began to flag.  Jeanne, who apparently did not at any time take any active part in the struggle, though she exposed herself to all its dangers, seized a ladder, placed it against the wall, and was about to mount, when an arrow struck her full in the breast.  The Maid fell, the crowd closed round; for a moment it seemed as if all were lost.

Here we have over again in the fable our friend Gamache.  It is a pretty story, and though we ask no one to take it for absolute fact, there is no reason why some such incident might not have occurred.  Gamache, the angry captain who rather than follow a peronnelle to the field was prepared to fold his banner round its staff, and give up his rank, is supposed to have been the nearest to her when she fell.  It was he who cleared the crowd from about her and raised her up.  “Take my horse,” he said, “brave creature.  Bear no malice.  I confess that I was in the wrong.”  “It is I that should be wrong if I bore malice,” cried Jeanne, “for never was a knight so courteous” (chevalier si bien apprins).  She was surrounded immediately by her people, the chaplain whom she had bidden to keep near her, her page, all her special attendants, who would have conveyed her out of the fight had she consented.  Jeanne had the courage to pull the arrow out of the wound with her own hand,—­“it stood a hand breadth out” behind her shoulder—­but then, being but a girl and this her first experience