he three-year-old Madame Margaret, and the common people
celebrated this royal union with such rejoicings as were possible in a
desolated country.[404] Jeanne, when she heard these tidings, said to
the man-at-arms: "I must go to the Dauphin, for no one in the world,
no king or duke or daughter of the King of Scotland, can restore the
realm of France."

[Footnote 404: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 436. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a
Domremy_, p. cxci.]

Then straightway she added: "In me alone is help, albeit for my part,
I would far rather be spinning by my poor mother's side, for this life
is not to my liking. But I must go; and so I will, for it is Messire's
command that I should go."

She said what she thought. But she did not know herself; she did not
know that her Voices were the cries of her own heart, and that she
longed to quit the distaff for the sword.

Jean de Metz asked, as Sire Robert had done: "Who is Messire?"

"He is God," she replied.

Then straightway, as if he believed in her, he said with a sudden
impulse: "I promise you, and I give you my word of honour, that God
helping me I will take you to the King."

He gave her his hand as a sign that he pledged his word and asked:
"When will you set forth?"

"This hour," she answered, "is better than to-morrow; to-morrow is
better than after to-morrow."

Jean de Metz himself, twenty-seven years later, reported this
conversation.[405] If we are to believe him, he asked the damsel in
conclusion whether she would travel in her woman's garb. It is easy to
imagine what difficulties he would foresee in journeying with a
peasant girl clad in a red frock over French roads infested with
lecherous fellows, and that he would deem it wiser for her to disguise
herself as a boy. She promptly divined his thought and replied: "I
will willingly dress as a man."[406]

[Footnote 405: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 436.]

[Footnote 406: _Ibid._, p. 436, 437.]

There is no reason why these things should not have occurred. Only if
they did, then a Lorraine freebooter suggested to the saint that idea
concerning her dress which later she will think to have received from
God.[407]

[Footnote 407: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 161, 176, 332. _Journal du siege_,
p. 45. _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 372.]

Of his own accord, or rather, acting by the advice of some wise
person, Sire Robert desired to know whether Jeanne was not being
inspired by an evil spirit. For the devil is cunning and sometimes
as