e austerities required by
extreme piety, she appeared magnificently attired, like a lord, for
indeed she held her lordship from God. She wore the dress of a knight,
a small hat, doublet and hose to match, a fine cloak of silk and cloth
of gold well lined and shoes laced on the outer side of the
foot.[1163] Such attire in no wise scandalised even the most austere
members of the Dauphin's party. They read in holy Scripture that
Esther and Judith, inspired by the Lord, loaded themselves with
ornaments; true it was for sexual reasons and in order for the
salvation of Israel to attract Ahasuerus and Holophernes. Wherefore
they held that when Jeanne decked herself with masculine adornments,
in order to appear before the men-at-arms as an angel giving victory
to the Christian King, far from yielding to the vanities of the world,
she, like Esther and Judith, had nothing in her heart but the interest
of the holy nation and the glory of God. The English and Burgundian
clerks on the other hand converted into scandal what was a subject of
edification, and maintained that she was a woman dissolute in dress
and in manners.

[Footnote 1163: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 220, 253; vol. ii, pp. 294, 438.
_Relation du greffier de La Rochelle_, p. 60. Analysis of a letter
from Regnault de Chartres in Rogier (_Trial_, vol. v, pp. 168-169).
Martin le Franc, _Le champion des dames_, in _Trial_, vol. v, p. 48.]

For seven years now Saint Michael the Archangel and the Saints
Catherine and Margaret, wearing rich and precious crowns, had been
visiting and conversing with her. It was when the bells were ringing,
at the hour of compline and of matins, that she could best hear their
words.[1164] In those days bells of all kinds, large and small,
metropolitan, parochial or conventual, sounded in peals, or, chiming
harmoniously, in voices grave or gay, spoke to all men and of all
things. Their song descended from the sky to mark the ecclesiastical
and civic calendar. They called priests and people to church; they
mourned for the dead and they praised God; they announced fairs and
field work; they clashed portentous tidings through the sky, and in
times of war they called to arms and sounded the alarm. Friendly to
the husbandman they scattered the tempest, they warded off hail-storms
and drove away pestilence. They put to flight those demons that,
flying ceaselessly through the air, haunt the children of men; and to
their blessed sound was attributed the pow