: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 179, note 5.]

[Footnote 1719: _Ibid._, pp. 101, 209, note 1.]

At the tidings that the Armagnacs were approaching Troyes, the
peasants had cut their corn before it was ripe and brought it into
Paris. On entering Saint-Denys, the Duke of Alencon's men-at-arms
found the town deserted. The chief burgesses had taken refuge in
Paris.[1720] Only a few of the poorer families were left. The Maid
held two newly born infants over the baptismal font.[1721]

[Footnote 1720: _Ibid._, pp. 241, 242. Monstrelet, vol. iv, p. 354.]

[Footnote 1721: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 103.]

Hearing of these Saint-Denys baptisms, her enemies accused her of
having lit candles and held them inclined over the infant's heads, in
order that she might read their destinies in the melted wax. It was
not the first time, it appeared, that she indulged in such practices.
When she entered a town, little children were said to offer her
candles kneeling, and she received them as an agreeable sacrifice.
Then upon the heads of these innocents she would let fall three drops
of burning wax, proclaiming that by virtue of this ceremony they could
not fail to be good. In such acts Burgundian ecclesiastics discerned
idolatry and witchcraft, in which was likewise involved heresy.[1722]

[Footnote 1722: _Ibid._, p. 304. Noel Valois, _Un nouveau temoignage
sur Jeanne d'Arc_, in _Annuaire-bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire
de France_, Paris, 1907, in 8vo, separate issue, pp. 17, 18.]

Here again, at Saint-Denys, she distributed banners to the
men-at-arms. Churchmen on the English side strongly suspected her of
charming those banners. And as everyone in those days believed in
magic, such a suspicion was not without its danger.[1723]

[Footnote 1723: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 236.]

The Maid and the Duke of Alencon lost no time. Immediately after their
arrival at Saint-Denys they went forth to skirmish before the gates of
Paris. Two or three times a day they engaged in this desultory
warfare, notably by the wind-mill at the Saint-Denys Gate and in the
village of La Chapelle. "Every day there was booty taken," says
Messire Jean de Bueil.[1724] It seems hardly credible that in a country
which had been plundered and ravaged over and over again, there
should have been anything left to be taken; and yet the statement is
made and attested by one of the nobles in the army.

[Footnote 1724: _Le Jouvencel_, vol. ii, p. 281.]

Out of respect f