into the midst of five guests
seated at table a stone cannon-ball weighing one hundred and
sixty-four pounds, which had done no one any harm.[1897] What price did
the Maid give for this house? Apparently six crowns of fine gold (at
sixty crowns to the mark), due half-yearly at Midsummer and Christmas,
for fifty-nine years. In addition, she must according to custom have
undertaken to keep the house in good condition and to pay out of her
own purse the ecclesiastical dues as well as rates for wells and
paving and all other taxes. Being obliged to have some one as surety,
she chose as her guarantor a certain Guillot de Guyenne, of whom we
know nothing further.[1898]

[Footnote 1896: Jules Doinel, _Note sur une maison de Jeanne d'Arc_, in
_Memoires de la Societe archeologique et historique de l'Orleanais_,
vol. xv, pp. 491-500.]

[Footnote 1897: _Journal du siege_, pp. 15, 16.]

[Footnote 1898: Jules Doinel, _Note sur une maison de Jeanne d'Arc_,
_loc. cit._]

There is no reason to believe that the Maid did not herself negotiate
this agreement. Saint as she was, she knew well what it was to possess
property. Such knowledge ran in her family; her father was the best
business man in his village.[1899] She herself was domesticated and
thrifty; for she kept her old clothes, and even in the field she knew
where to find them when she wanted to make presents of them to her
friends. She counted up her possessions in arms and horses, valued
them at twelve thousand crowns, and, apparently made a pretty accurate
reckoning.[1900] But what was her idea in taking this house? Did she
think of living in it? Did she intend when the war was over to return
to Orleans and pass a peaceful old age in a house of her own? Or was
she planning for her parents to dwell there, or some Vouthon uncle, or
her brothers, one of whom was in great poverty and had got a doublet
out of the citizens of Orleans?[1901]

[Footnote 1899: S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. 360.]

[Footnote 1900: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 295.]

[Footnote 1901: Accounts of the fortress, in _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 259,
260.]

On the third of March she followed King Charles to Sully.[1902] The
chateau, in which she lodged near the King, belonged to the Sire de la
Tremouille, who had inherited it from his mother, Marie de Sully, the
daughter of Louis I of Bourbon. It had been recaptured from the
English after the deliverance of Orleans.[1903] A stronghold on the
Loire, on the high