ck in the evening before she
left Checy. The captains wanted her to enter the town at nightfall for
fear of disorders and lest the crush around her should be too
great.[950] Doubtless they passed along the broad valleys leading from
Semoy towards the south, on the borders of the parishes of Saint-Marc
and Saint-Jean-de-Braye. On the way she said to those who rode with
her: "Fear nothing. No harm shall happen to you."[951] And indeed the
only danger was for pedestrians. Horsemen ran little risk of being
pursued by the English, who were short of horses in their bastions.

[Footnote 950: _Journal du siege_, p. 75.]

[Footnote 951: _Ibid._, p. 76.]

On that Friday, the 29th of April, in the darkness, she entered
Orleans, by the Burgundian Gate. She was in full armour and rode a
white horse.[952] A white horse was the steed of heralds and
archangels.[953] The Bastard had placed her on his right. Before her
was borne her standard, on which figured two angels, each holding a
flower de luce, and her pennon, painted with the picture of the
Annunciation. Then came the Marshal de Boussac, Guy de Cailly, Pierre
and Jean d'Arc, Jean de Metz, and Bertrand de Poulengy, the Sire
d'Aulon, and those lords, captains, men-of-war, and citizens who had
come to meet her at Checy.[954] Bearing torches and rejoicing as
heartily as if they had seen God himself descending among them, the
townfolk of Orleans pressed around her.[955] They had suffered great
privations, they had feared that help would never come; but now they
were heartened and felt as if the siege had been raised already by the
divine virtue, which they had been told resided in this Maid. They
looked at her with love and veneration; elbowing and pushing each
other, men, women, and children rushed forward to touch her and her
white horse, as folk touch the relics of saints. In the crush a torch
set her pennon on fire. The Maid, beholding it, spurred on her horse
and galloped to the flame, which she extinguished with a skill
apparently miraculous; for everything in her was marvellous.[956]
Men-at-arms and citizens, enraptured, accompanied her in crowds to the
Church of Sainte-Croix, whither she went first to give thanks, then to
the house of Jacques Boucher, where she was to lodge.[957]

[Footnote 952: _Journal du siege_, pp. 74, 75.]

[Footnote 953: And even now trumpeters ride white horses (_Histoire de
Jeanne d'Arc_, by Lebrun de Charmettes, 1817, in 8vo, vol. ii, p.
21).]