In the meantime the secret negotiations, which were always being carried on under the surface, had come to this point, that Charles had made a private treaty with Philip of Burgundy by which that prince pledged himself to give up Paris into the King’s hands within fifteen days.  This agreement furnished a sufficient pretext for the delay in marching against Paris, delay which was Charles’s invariable method, and which but for Jeanne’s hardihood and determination, had all but crushed the expedition to Rheims itself.  It was never with any will of his or of his adviser, La Tremouille, that any stronghold was assailed.  He would fain have passed by Troyes, as the reader will remember, he would fain have delayed going to Rheims; in each case he had been forced to move by the impetuosity of the Maid.  But a treaty which touched the honour of the King was a different matter.  Philip of Burgundy, with whom it was made, seems to have held the key of the position.  He was called to Paris by Bedford on one side to defend the city against its lawful King; he had pledged himself on the other to Charles to give it up.  He had in his hands, though it is uncertain whether he ever read it, that missive of the sorceress, the letter of Jeanne which I have quoted, calling upon him on the part of God to make peace.  What was he to do?  There were reasons drawing him to both sides.  He was the enemy of Charles on account of the murder of his father, and therefore had every interest in keeping Paris from him; he was angry with the English on account of the marriage of the Duke of Gloucester with Jacqueline of Brabant, which interfered with his own rights and safety in Flanders, and therefore might have served himself by giving up the capital to the King.  As for the appeal of Jeanne, what was the letter of that mad creature to a prince and statesman?  The progress of affairs was arrested by this double problem.  Jeanne had been the prominent, the only important figure in the history of France for some months past.  Now that shining figure was jostled aside, and the ordinary laws of life, with all the counter changes of negotiation, the ineffectual comings and goings, the meaner half-seen persons, the fierce contending personal interests—­in which there was no love of either God or man, or any elevated notion of patriotism—­came again into play.

Jeanne would seem to have already foreseen and felt this change even before she left Rheims; there is a new tone of sadness in some of her recorded words; or if not of sadness, at least of consciousness that an end was approaching to all these triumphs and splendours.  The following tale is told in various different versions, as occurring with different people; but the account I give is taken from the lips of Dunois himself, a very competent witness.  As the King, after his coronation, wended his way through the country, receiving submission and joyous welcome from every village and little town, it happened that while passing through