l on the evening of
which I have just written.

"Are you not afraid, Jeanne," they asked, "of going into battle, of
living so strange a life, of being the companion of the great men
of the earth?"

And she, looking at them with those big grave eyes of hers, had
made answer thus:

"I fear nothing but treachery."

I wondered when she spoke what treachery she was to meet with; but
soon it became all too apparent. The King's ministers were
treacherously negotiating with false Burgundy, some say with the
Regent Bedford himself. They cared not to save France. They cared
only to keep out of harm's way--to avoid all peril and danger, and
to thwart the Maid, whose patriotism and lofty courage was such a
foil to their pusillanimity and cowardice.

So that though she led us to the very walls of Paris, and would
have taken the whole city without a doubt, had she been permitted,
though the Duc d'Alencon, now her devoted adherent, went down upon
his very knees to beg of the King to fear nothing, but trust all to
her genius, her judgment; he could not prevail, and orders were
sent forth to break down the bridge that she had built for the
storming party to pass over, and that the army should fall back
with their task undone!

Oh, the folly, the ingratitude, the baseness of it all! How well do
I remember the face of the Maid, as she said:

"The King's word must be obeyed; but truly it will take him seven
years--ah, and twenty years now--to accomplish that which I would
do for him in less than twenty days!"

Think of it--you who have seen what followed. Was Paris in the
King's hands in less than seven years? Were the English driven from
France in less than twenty?

She was wounded, too; and had been forcibly carried away from the
field of battle; but it was against her own will. She would have
fought through thick and thin, had the King's commands not
prevailed; and even then she begged to be left with a band of
soldiers at St. Denis.

"My voices tell me to remain here," she said; but alas! her voices
were regarded no longer by the King, whose foolish head and
cowardly heart were under other influences than that of the Maid,
to whom he had promised so much such a short while since.

And so his word prevailed, and we were perforce obliged to retreat
from those walls we had so confidently desired to storm. And there
in the church of St. Denis, where she had knelt so many hours in
prayer and supplication, the Maid left her