Early in the morning, a wonderful procession came out of the Archbishop’s house.  Four splendid peers of France, in full armour with their banners, rode through the streets to the old Abbey of Saint Remy—­the old church which Leo IX. consecrated, in the eleventh century, on an equally splendid occasion, and which may still be seen to-day—­to fetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the Sainte Ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil of consecration had been sent to Clovis out of Heaven.  These noble messengers were the “hostages” of this sacred charge, engaging themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till it was restored to its appointed guardians.  This vow having been made, the Abbot of St. Remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards the cathedral under the escort of the Knights Hostages, blazing also in the flashes of their armour.  This procession was met half-way, before the Church of St. Denis, by another, that of the Archbishop and his train, to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to the cathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd.

The Maid had her occupations this July morning like the rest.  We hear nothing of any interview with her father, or with Durand the good uncle who had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was Durand who was sent for to the King and questioned as to Jeanne’s life in her childhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that Jacques d’Arc still stood aloof, dour, as a Scotch peasant father might have been, suspicious of his daughter’s intimacy with all these fine people, and in no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little less than shame to such rugged folk.  And there were his two sons who would take him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplace he was more at home than with Jeanne.  What the Maid had to do on the morning of the coronation day was something very different from any home talk with her relations.  She who felt herself commissioned not only to lead the armies of France, but to deal with her princes and take part in her councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the Duke of Burgundy.  She had summoned the English by letter three times repeated, to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by God’s will were French.  It was with still better reason that she summoned Philip of Burgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal the breach which had torn France in two: 

JHESUS, MARIA.