and sorrowful sense of that necessity of her mission
which had steeled her to dispense with their consent, they should have
expected such an expedient to arrest her steps. The affair, we must
suppose, had gone through all the more usual stages of entreaty on the
lover's part, and persuasion on that of the parents, before such an
attempt was finally made. But the shy Jeanne had by this time attained
that courage of desperation which is not inconsistent with the most
gentle nature; and without saying anything to anyone, she too went to
Toul, appeared before the bishop, and easily freed herself from the
pretended engagement, though whether with any reference to her very
different destination we are not told.(3)

These proceedings, however, and the father's dreams and the
remonstrances of the mother, must have made troubled days in the
cottage, and scenes of wrath and contradiction, hard to bear. The winter
passed distracted by these contentions, and it is difficult to imagine
how Jeanne could have borne this had it not been that the period of her
outset had already been indicated, and that it was only in the middle of
Lent that her succour was to reach the King. The village, no doubt, was
almost as much distracted as her father's house to hear of these strange
discussions and of the incredible purpose of the _bonne douce fille_,
whose qualities everybody knew and about whom there was nothing
eccentric, nothing unnatural, but only simple goodness, to distinguish
her above her neighbours. In the meantime her voices called her
continually to her work. They set her free from the ordinary yoke of
obedience, always so strong in the mind of a French girl. The dreadful
step of abandoning her home, not to be thought of under any other
circumstances, was more and more urgently pressed upon her. Could it
indeed be saints and angels who ordained a step which was outside of all
the habits and first duties of nature? But we have no reason to believe
that this nineteenth-century doubt of her visitors, and of whether their
mandates were right, entered into the mind of a girl who was of her own
period and not of ours. She went on steadfastly, certain of her mission
now, and inaccessible either to remonstrance or appeal.

It was towards the beginning of Lent, as Poulengy tells us, that the
decision was made, and she left home finally, to go "to France" as is
always said. But it seems to have been in January that she set out once
more for