We hear nothing now of the white armour; it must have been dimmed and worn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chances of the war; but it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast, on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheering the men, a spot of light still, amid all the steely glimmering of the mail-coats and the dark downpour of that iron rain.  Half a hundred war cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of “Witch, Devil, Ribaude,” and names still more insulting to her purity, could not silence that treble shout, the most wonderful, surely, that ever ran through such an infernal clamour, so prodigious, the chronicler says, that it was a marvel to hear it. De par Dieu, Rendez vous, rendez vous, au roy de France.  If as we believe she never struck a blow, the aspect of that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still.  While the boldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves and what beams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stood without even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given, cheering them on, exposed to every shot.

The fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success on the part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothing to discourage them, as the fight raged on.  Few were wounded, notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverins, “by the grace of God and the good luck of the Maid.”  But towards the evening Jeanne herself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh; she seems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when a still greater misfortune befell:  her standard-bearer was hit, first in the foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from the wound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet.  What happened to the banner, we are not told; Jeanne most likely herself caught it as it fell.  But at this stroke, more dreadful than her own wound, her strength failed her, and she crept behind a bush or heap of stones, where she lay, refusing to quit the place.  Some say she managed to slide into the dry ditch where there was a little shelter, but resisted all attempts to carry her away, and some add that while she lay there she employed herself in a vain attempt to throw faggots into the ditch to make it passable.  It is said that she kept calling out to them to persevere, to go on and Paris would be won.  She had promised, they say, to sleep that night within the conquered city; but this promise comes to us with no seal of authority.  Jeanne knew that it had taken her eight days to free Orleans, and she could scarcely have promised so sudden a success in the more formidable achievement.  But she was at least determined in her conviction that perseverance only was needed.  She must have lain for hours on the slope of the outer moat, urging on the troops with such force as her dauntless voice could give, repeating again and again