to me in vision that you are come to this
Kingdom to restore the same to good peace and concord. I have had myself
many revelations concerning the peace of the Kingdom."

Next Simone la Bardine took up her parable and said:

"Brother Joconde, I lived once in a fine house in the Rue Saint-Antoine,
near by the Place Baudet, which is the fairest quarter of Paris, and the
wealthiest. I had a matted chamber, mantles of cloth of gold, and
gowns trimmed with miniver, enough to fill three great chests; I had a
feather-bed, a dresser loaded with pewter, and a little book wherein you
saw in pictures the story of Our Lord. But since the wars and pillagings
that devastate the Kingdom, I have lost everything. The gallants never
come now to take their pleasure in the Place Baudet. But the wolves come
there instead to devour little children. The Burgundians and the English
are as bad as the Armagnacs. Would you have me go with you?"

The Monk gazed a while in silence at the two women; and deeming it
was Jesus Christ himself had led them to him, he received them for his
Penitents, and thereafter the twain followed him wherever he went. Every
day he preached to the people, now at "The Innocents," now at the Porte
Saint-Honore, or at the Halles. But he never went outside the Walls, by
reason of the Armagnacs, who were raiding all the countryside round the
city.

His words led many souls to a better life; and at the fourth sermon he
preached in Paris, he received for Penitents Jeannette Chastenier, wife
of a merchant-draper on the Pont-au-Change, and another woman, by name
Opportune Jadoin, who nursed the sick at the Hotel-Dieu and was no
longer very young. He admitted likewise into his company a gardener of
the Ville-l'Eveque, a lad of about sixteen, Robin by name, who bare on
his feet and hands the stigmata of the crucifixion, and was shaken by
a sore trembling of all his limbs. He often saw the Holy Virgin in
corporeal presence, and heard her speech and savoured the divine odours
of her glorified body. She had entrusted him with a message for the
Regent of England and for the Duke of Burgundy. Meantime the army of
Messire Charles of Valois entered the town of Saint-Denis. And no man
durst from that day go out of Paris to harvest the fields or gather
aught from the market-gardens which covered the plain to the northward
of the city. Instantly famine prices ruled, and the inhabitants began to
suffer cruelly. And they were further exa