trust. She dared not confide to them much of the mystery
of her Voices, and when the Churchmen were not present she told
Alencon, her fair Duke, that she knew more and could do more than she
had ever told all those clerks.[750] It was not to them she had been
sent; it was not for them that she had come. She felt awkward in their
presence, and their manners were the occasion of that irritation which
is discernible in more than one of her replies.[751] Sometimes when
they questioned her she retreated to the end of her bench and sulked.

[Footnote 750: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 92.]

[Footnote 751: _Chronique de la Pucelle_, p. 275.]

"We come to you from the King," said Maitre Pierre de Versailles.

She replied with a bad grace: "I am quite aware that you are come to
question me again. I don't know A from B."[752] But to the question:
"Wherefore do you come?" she made answer eagerly: "I come from the
King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans, and take the King to be
crowned and anointed at Reims. Maitre Jean Erault, have you ink and
paper? Write what I shall tell you." And she dictated a brief
manifesto to the English captains: "You, Suffort, Clasdas, and La
Poule, in the name of the King of Heaven I call upon you to return to
England."[753]

[Footnote 752: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 74 (evidence of Gobert
Thibault).]

[Footnote 753: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 74. Boucher de Molandon and A. de
Beaucorps, _L'armee anglaise_, p. 111. La Poule, as he is called here,
is identical with Suffort, and is none other than William Pole, Earl
of Suffolk, unless John Pole, William's brother, be intended, but he
was not one of the three organisers of the siege. As for Clasdas or
Glasdale, as the French called him, he served under the orders of the
Commander of Les Tourelles. These errors may have been Jeanne's, or
possibly they were made by the witness. They do not recur in the
letter to the English.]

Maitre Jean Erault, who wrote at her dictation, was, like most of the
clerks, favourably disposed towards her. Further, he had his own
ideas. He recollected that Marie of Avignon, surnamed La Gasque, had
uttered true and memorable prophecies to King Charles VI. Now La
Gasque had told the King that the realm was to suffer many sorrows;
and she had seen weapons in the sky. Her story of her vision had
concluded with these words: "While I was afeard, believing myself
called upon to take these weapons, a voice comforted me, saying: 'They
are no