by the side of the river which had swallowed Classidas
and all his men. French and English together devoutly turned towards and
responded to that Mass in the pause of bewildering uncertainty. "Which
way are their heads turned?" Jeanne asked when it was over. "They are
turned away from us, they are turned to Meung," was the reply. "Then let
them go, _de par Dieu_," the Maid replied.

The siege had lasted for seven months, but eight days of the Maid were
enough to bring it to an end. The people of Orleans still, every year,
on the 8th of May, make a procession round the town and give thanks to
God for its deliverance. Henceforth, the Maid was known no longer as
Jeanne d'Arc, the peasant of Domremy, but as _La Pucelle d'Orleans_, in
the same manner in which one might speak of the Prince of Waterloo, or
the Duc de Malakoff.

(1) Their special mission seems to have been a demand for
the return of a herald previously sent who had never come
back. As Dunois accompanied the demand by a threat to kill
the English prisoners in Orleans if the herald was not sent
back, the request was at once accorded, with fierce
defiances to the Maid, the dairy-maid as she is called,
bidding her go back to her cows, and threatening to burn her
if they caught her.

(2) I avail myself here as elsewhere of Mr. Lang's lucid
description. "It is really perfectly intelligible. The
Council wanted a feint on the left bank, Jeanne an attack on
the right. She knew their scheme, untold, but entered into
it. There was, however, no feint. She deliberately forced
the fighting. There was grand fighting, well worth telling,"
adds my martial critic, who understands it so much better
than I do, and who I am happy to think is himself telling
the tale in another way.

(3) She had made this prophecy a month before, and it was
recorded three weeks before the event in the Town Book of
Brabant.--A. L.

CHAPTER V -- THE CAMPAIGN OF THE LOIRE. JUNE, JULY, 1429.

The rescue of Orleans and the defeat of the invincible English were news
to move France from one end to the other, and especially to raise the
spirits and restore the courage of that part of France which had
no sympathy with the invaders and to which the English yoke was
unaccustomed and disgraceful. The news flew up and down the Loire from
point to point, arousing every village, and breathing new heart