But it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clear and definite message for the Maid.  Their words, which she quotes, were now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come.  “Fear not, for God will stand by you.”  She thought they meant that she would be delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her sacred person preserved from any profane touch.  But yet such promises have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure than deliverance.  For the first time the Maid was often sad; she feared nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart.  Orleans and Rheims had been clear as daylight, her “voices” had said to her “Do this” and she had done it.  Now there was no definite direction.  She had to judge for herself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she did was what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty.  This of itself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart.  M. Fabre tells (alone among the biographers of Jeanne) that there were symptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and ways during the moment of triumph.  Her chaplain Pasquerel wrote a letter in her name to the Hussites, against whom the Pope was then sending crusades, in which “I, the Maid,” threatened, if they were not converted, to come against them and give them the alternative of death or amendment.  Quicherat says that to the Count d’Armagnac who had written to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the three then existent Popes was the real one, she is reported to have answered that she would tell him as soon as the English left her free to do so.  But this is a perverted account of what she really did say, and M. Fabre seems to be, like the rest of us, a little confused in his dates:  and the documents themselves on which he builds are not of unquestioned authority.  These, however, would be but small speck upon the sunshine of her perfect humility and sobriety; if indeed they are to be depended upon as authentic at all.

The day of Jeanne, her time of glory and success, was but a short one—­Orleans was delivered on the 8th of May, the coronation of Charles took place on the 17th of July; before the earliest of these dates she had spent nearly two months in an anxious yet hopeful struggle of preparation, before she was permitted to enter upon her career.  The time of her discouragement was longer.  It was ten months from the day when she rode out of Rheims, the 25th of July, 1429, till the 23d of May, 1430, when she was taken.  She had said after the deliverance of Orleans that she had but a year in which to accomplish her work, and at a later period, Easter, 1430, her “voices” told her that “before the St. Jean” she would be in the power of her enemies.  Both these statements came true.  She rose quickly but fell more slowly, struggling along upon the downward