to show in what
detestation they held him, resumed dice, bowls, draughts, and all other
games they had renounced at his exhortation.

The city was strongly fortified, for in the days when King Jean was a
prisoner of the English, the citizens of Paris, seeing the enemy in the
heart of the Kingdom, had feared a siege and had hastened to put the
walls in a state of defence. They had surrounded the place with moats
and counter-moats. The moats, on the left bank of the river, were dug
at the foot of the walls forming the old circle of fortification. But
on the right bank there were faubourgs, both extensive and well built,
outside the walls and almost touching them. The new moats enclosed a
part of these, and the Dauphin Charles, King Jean's son, afterward had
a wall built along the line of them. Nevertheless there was some feeling
of insecurity, for the Cathedral Chapter took measures to put the relics
and treasure out of reach of the enemy.

Meantime, on Sunday, August 21st, a Cordelier, by name Brother Joconde,
entered the town. He had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and was said,
like Brother Vincent Ferrier and Brother Bernardino of Sienna, to
have enjoyed by the abounding grace of God many revelations anent the
forthcoming end of the world. He gave out that he would preach his first
sermon to the Parisians on Tuesday following, St. Bartholomew's day, in
the Cloister of "The Innocents." On the eve of that day more than six
thousand persons spent the night in the Cloister. At the foot of the
platform wherefrom he was to preach, the women sat squatted on their
heels, and amongst them Guillaumette Dyonis, who was blind from birth.
She was the child of an artisan who had been killed by the Burgundians
in the woods of Boulogne-la-Grande. Her mother had been carried off by
a Burgundian man-at-arms, and none knew what had become of her.
Guillaumette was fifteen or sixteen years of age. She lived at "The
Innocents" on what she made by spinning wool, at which trade there was
not a better worker to be found in all the town. She went and came in
the streets without the help of any and knew everything as well as those
who can see. As she lived a good and holy life and fasted often, she
was favoured with visions. In especial she had been accorded notable
revelations by the Apostle St. John concerning the troubles that then
beset the Kingdom of France. Now, as she was reciting her Hours at the
foot of the platform, under the great Da