scales fell from her eyes; a bright light was
shed abroad in her mind. Behold wherefore God had chosen her. Through
her the Dauphin Charles was to be anointed at Reims. The white dove,
which of old was sent to the blessed Remi, was to come down again at
the Virgin's call. God, who loves the French, marks their king with a
sign, and when there is no sign the royal power has departed. The
anointing alone makes the king, and Messire Charles de Valois had not
been anointed. Notwithstanding the father lies becrowned and
besceptred in the basilica of Saint-Denys in France, the son is but
the dauphin and will not enter into his inheritance till the day when
the oil of the inexhaustible ampulla shall flow over his forehead. And
God has chosen her, a young, ignorant peasant maid, to lead him,
through the ranks of his enemies, to Reims, where he shall receive the
unction poured upon Saint Louis. Unfathomable ways of God! The humble
maid, knowing not how to ride a horse, unskilled in the arts of war,
is chosen to bring to Our Lord his temporal vicar of Christian France.

Henceforth Jeanne knew what great deeds she was to bring to pass. But
as yet she discerned not the means by which she was to accomplish
them.

"Thou must fare forth into France," Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret
said to her.

"Daughter of God, thou shalt lead the Dauphin to Reims[318] that he
may there receive worthily his anointing," the Archangel Michael said
to her.

[Footnote 318: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 130; vol. ii, p. 456; vol. iii, p.
3, _passim_.]

She must obey them--but how? If at that time there were not just at
hand some devout adviser to direct her, one incident quite personal
and unimportant, which then occurred in her father's house, may have
sufficed to point out the way to the young saint.

Tenant-in-chief of the Castle on the island in 1419, and in 1423 elder
of the community, Jacques d'Arc was one of the notables of Domremy.
The village folk held him in high esteem and readily entrusted him
with difficult tasks. Towards the end of March, 1427, they sent him to
Vaucouleurs as their authorised proxy in a lawsuit they were
conducting before Robert de Baudricourt. It was a question of the
payment of damages required at once from the lord and the inhabitants
of Greux and Domremy by a certain Guyot Poignant, of Montigny-le-Roi.
These damages went back four years to when, as a return for his
protection, the Damoiseau of Commercy had extorted fr