replied Catherine; "you were asleep, so I did not like to
wake you."

"Will she not come to-morrow?"

Catherine assured her that she would come without fail.

This time Jeanne slept in the day in order that she might keep awake
at night; so she lay down at night in the bed with Catherine and kept
her eyes open. Often she asked: "Will she not come?"

And Catherine replied: "Yes, directly."

But Jeanne saw nothing.[1853] She held the test to be a good one.
Nevertheless she could not get the white lady attired in cloth of gold
out of her head. When Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret came to her,
as they delayed not to do, she spoke to them concerning this white
lady and asked them what she was to think of her. The reply was such
as Jeanne expected:

"This Catherine," they said, "is naught but futility and folly."[1854]

[Footnote 1853: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 108, 109.]

[Footnote 1854: _Ibid._, p. 107.]

Then was Jeanne constrained to cry: "That is just what I thought."

The strife between these two prophetesses was brief but bitter. Jeanne
always maintained the opposite of what Catherine said. When the latter
was going to make peace with the Duke of Burgundy, Jeanne said to her:

"Me seemeth that you will never find peace save at the lance's
point."[1855]

[Footnote 1855: _Ibid._, p. 108.]

There was one matter at any rate wherein the White Lady proved a
better prophetess than the Maid's Council, to wit, the siege of La
Charite. When Jeanne wished to go and deliver that town, Catherine
tried to dissuade her.

"It is too cold," she said; "I would not go."[1856]

[Footnote 1856: _Ibid._]

Catherine's reason was not a high one; and yet it is true Jeanne would
have done better not to go to the siege of La Charite.

Taken from the Duke of Burgundy by the Dauphin in 1422, La Charite had
been retaken in 1424, by Perrinet Gressart,[1857] a successful
captain, who had risen from the rank of mason's apprentice to that of
pantler to the Duke of Burgundy and had been created Lord of Laigny by
the King of England.[1858] On the 30th of December, 1425, Perrinet's
men arrested the Sire de La Tremouille, when he was on his way to the
Duke of Burgundy, having been appointed ambassador in one of those
eternal negotiations, forever in process between the King and the
Duke. He was for several months kept a prisoner in the fortress which
his captor commanded. He must needs pay a ransom of fourteen thousand
golden crowns; a