or believing that towards the end of
March, he had asked the Sire de la Tremouille to send her from Sully
with a goodly company to wage war in l'Ile-de-France. And our
hypothesis is confirmed when, after they had been unhappily deprived
of Jeanne's services, we find the bishop and the Chamberlain driven to
replace her by someone likewise favoured with visions and claiming to
be sent of God. Unable to discover a maid they had to make shift with
a youth. This resolution they took a few days after Jeanne's capture
and this is how it came about.

Some time before, a shepherd lad of Gevaudan, by name Guillaume, while
tending his flocks at the foot of the Lozere Mountains and guarding
them from wolf and lynx, had a revelation concerning the realm of
France. This shepherd, like John, Our Lord's favourite disciple, was
virgin. In one of the caves of the Mende Mountain, where the holy
apostle Privat had prayed and fasted, his ear was struck by a heavenly
voice, and thus he knew that God was sending him to the King of
France. He went to Mende, just as Jeanne had gone to Vaucouleurs in
order that he might be taken to the King. There he found pious folk,
who, touched by his holiness and persuaded that there was power in
him, provided for his equipment and for his journey, which provisions,
in sooth, amounted to very little. The words he addressed to the King
were much the same as those uttered by the Maid.

"Sire," he said, "I am commanded to go with your people; and without
fail the English and Burgundians shall be discomfited."[2049]

[Footnote 2049: Summary of a letter from Regnault de Chartres to the
inhabitants of Reims, _Trial_, vol. v, p. 168.]

The King received him kindly. The clerks who had examined the Maid
must have feared lest if they repulsed this shepherd lad they might be
rejecting the aid of the Holy Ghost. Amos was a shepherd, and to him
God granted the gift of prophecy: "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of
heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." MATT. xi, 25.

But before this shepherd could be believed he must give a sign. The
clerks of Poitiers, who in those evil days languished in dire penury,
did not appear exacting in their demand for proofs; they had
counselled the King to employ the Maid merely on the promise that as a
token of her mission she would deliver Orleans. The Gevaudan shepherd
had more than promises to allege; he showed