s instant, whether
intentionally to exclude the heroine from safety, or through panic and
fear of the Burgundians and English entering the town along with the
French, the drawbridge was lifted, and Joan, with a handful of the
faithful few who were ever at her side in time of peril, was
surrounded by a sea of foemen. In a moment half a dozen soldiers
secured her horse and seized her on every side, trying to drag her out
of the saddle. The long skirts which the heroine wore were soon torn
off by these rough hands. An archer of Picardy, belonging to the army
of John of Luxembourg, wrenched her from her horse and made her
prisoner. Her brother Peter, her faithful squire d'Aulon, and Pothon
de Xaintrailles were all captured at the same time.

Thus fell Joan of Arc into the hands of her enemies, and the question
whether through treachery or not has never been settled.

According to an old work published early in the sixteenth century,
called _Le Miroir des Femmes Vertueuses_, Joan of Arc had taken the
communion in the Church of Saint James at Compiegne, and was standing
leaning against a pillar of that church; a large number of citizens
with many children stood around, to whom she said: 'My children and
dear friends, I bid you to mark that I have been sold and betrayed,
and that I shall be shortly put to death. So I beseech you all to pray
to God for me, for never more shall I be able to be of service to the
King or to the kingdom of France.'

This story, which, whether authentic or not, is surely a touching one,
is full of the spirit of the heroine. It rests upon the testimony of
two persons, one eighty-six and the other eighty-eight years of age,
by whom the author was told the tale in 1498, both affirming that they
had been in the church when Joan of Arc spoke of her betrayal. There
can be but little doubt that Joan had had for some time before she
went to Compiegne a presentiment of her soon falling into her enemies'
power. On the eve of the King's coronation at Rheims she said to her
friends that what she alone feared was treason--a foreboding too soon,
alas! to come true. She never, however, seems to have fixed on any
particular period when the treason she dreaded would occur; and during
her trial she acknowledged that, had she known she would have been
taken prisoner during the sortie on the 24th of May, she would not
have undertaken that adventure.

One of her best historians, M. Wallon, thinks that the words whic