r an invitation which might bring back the brightness to her child.
Laxart was a peasant like the rest, a _prud' homme_ well thought of
among his people. He lived in Burey le Petit, near to Vaucouleurs, the
chief place of the district, and Jeanne already knew that it was to the
captain of Vaucouleurs that she was to address herself. Thus she secured
her object in the simplest and most natural way.

Yet the reader cannot but hold his breath at the thought of what that
amazing revelation must have been to the homely, rustic soul, her
companion, communicated as they went along the common road in the common
daylight. "She said to the witness that she must go to France to the
Dauphin, to make him to be crowned King." It must have been as if a
thunderbolt had fallen at his feet when the girl whom he had known in
every development of her little life, thus suddenly disclosed to him her
secret purpose and determination. All her simple excellence the good
man knew, and that she was no fantastic chatterer, but truly _une bonne
douce fille_, bold in nothing but kindness, with nothing to blush for
but the fault of going too often to church. "Did you never hear that
France should be made desolate by a woman and restored by a maid?" she
said; and this would seem to have been an unanswerable argument. He had,
henceforth, nothing to do but to promote her purpose as best he could in
every way.

It would not seem at all unlikely to this good man that the Archangel
Michael, if Jeanne's revelation to him went so far, should have named
Robert de Baudricourt, the chief of the district, captain of the town
and its forces, the principal personage in all the neighbourhood, as
the person to whom Jeanne's purpose was to be revealed, but rather a
guarantee of St. Michael himself, familiar with good society; and the
Seigneur must have been more or less in good intelligence with his
people, not too alarming to be referred to, even on so insignificant
a subject as the vagaries of a country girl--though these by this
time must have begun to seem something more than vagaries to the
half-convinced peasant. And it was no doubt a great relief to his mind
thus to put the decision of the question into the hands of a man better
informed than himself. Laxart proceeded to Vaucouleurs upon his mission,
shyly yet with confidence. He would seem to have had a preliminary
interview with Baudricourt before introducing Jeanne. The stammering
countryman, the bluff, ru