ttempted and to assign to it the date 1435. The editors, and
following them several scholars, have believed it possible to identify
this poem of 20,529 lines with a _certain mistaire_[26] played on the
sixth anniversary of the delivery of the city. They have drawn their
conclusions from the following circumstances: the Marechal de Rais,
who delighted to organise magnificent farces and mysteries, was in
Duke Charles's city expending vast sums[27] there from September,
1434, till August, 1435; in 1439 the city purchased out of its
municipal funds "a standard and a banner, which had belonged to
Monseigneur de Reys and had been used by him to represent the manner
of the storming of Les Tourelles and their capture from the
English."[28] From such a statement it is impossible to prove that in
1435 or in 1439, on May 8, there was acted a play having the Siege for
its subject and the Maid for its heroine. If, however, we take "the
manner of the storming of Les Tourelles" to mean a mystery rather than
a pageant or some other form of entertainment, and if we consider the
_certain mistaire_ of 1435 as indicating a representation of that
siege which had been laid and raised by the English, we shall thus
arrive at a mystery of the siege. But even then we must examine
whether it be that mystery the text of which has come down to us.

[Footnote 25: _Mystere du Siege d'Orleans_, first published by MM. F.
Guessard and E. de Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to, according to the only
manuscript, which is preserved in the Vatican Library.--_Cf._ _Etude
sur le mystere du siege d'Orleans_, by H. Tivier, Paris, 1868, 8vo.]

[Footnote 26: _Trial_, vol. v, p. 309.]

[Footnote 27: The Abbe E. Bossard and de Maulde, _Gilles de Rais,
Marechal de France, dit Barbe-Bleue_ (1404-1440), 2nd edition, Paris,
1886, 8vo, pp. 94-113.]

[Footnote 28: _Un estandart et banniere qui furent a Monseigneur de
Reys pour faire la maniere de l'assault comment les Tourelles furent
prinses sur les Anglois Mistere du siege_, p. viii.]

Among the one hundred and forty speaking personages in this work is
the Marechal de Rais. Hence it has been concluded that the mystery was
written and acted before the lawsuit ended by that sentence to which
effect was given above the Nantes Bridge, on October 20, 1440. How,
indeed, it has been asked, after so ignominious a death could the
vampire of Machecoul have been represented to the people of Orleans as
fighting for their deliverance? H