atory to which the doctors of Poitiers had
subjected her.[1828] She was persuaded that these clerks had questioned
her with extreme severity, and she firmly believed that she had
triumphed over their ill-will. Alas! she was soon to know clerks even
less accommodating.

[Footnote 1828: _Trial_, vol. iii, pp. 86, 87.]

Mistress Marguerite said to her one day: "If you are not afraid when
you fight, it is because you know you will not be killed." Whereupon
Jeanne answered: "I am no surer of that than are the other
combatants."

Oftentimes women came to the Bouligny house, bringing paternosters and
other trifling objects of devotion for the Maid to touch.

Jeanne used to say laughingly to her hostess: "Touch them yourself.
Your touch will do them as much good as mine."[1829]

[Footnote 1829: _Ibid._, pp. 86, 88.]

This ready repartee must have shown Mistress Marguerite that Jeanne,
ignorant as she may have been, was none the less capable of
displaying a good grace and common sense in her conversation.

While in many matters this good woman found the Maid but a simple
creature, in military affairs she deemed her an expert. Whether, when
she judged the saintly damsel's skill in wielding arms, she was giving
her own opinion or merely speaking from hearsay, as would seem
probable, she at any rate declared later that Jeanne rode a horse and
handled a lance as well as the best of knights and so well that the
army marvelled.[1830] Indeed most captains in those days could do no
better.

[Footnote 1830: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 88.]

Probably there were dice and dice-boxes in the Bouligny house,
otherwise Jeanne would have had no opportunity of displaying that
horror of gaming which struck her hostess. On this matter Jeanne
agreed with her comrade, Friar Richard, and indeed with everyone else
of good life and good doctrine.[1831]

[Footnote 1831: _Ibid._, p. 87.]

What money she had Jeanne distributed in alms. "I am come to succour
the poor and needy," she used to say.[1832]

[Footnote 1832: _Ibid._, pp. 87, 88.]

When the multitude heard such words they were led to believe that this
Maid of God had been raised up for something more than the
glorification of the Lilies, and that she was come to dispel such ills
as murder, pillage and other sins grievous to God, from which the
realm was suffering. Mystic souls looked to her for the reform of the
Church and the reign of Jesus Christ on earth. She was invoked as a
saint,