. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p.
ccxxxix.]

"Sow, sow your seed, my good folk," he said. "Sow beans ready for the
harvest, for He who is to come will come quickly."[1398]

[Footnote 1398: _Journal du siege_, p. 110. _Chronique de la Pucelle_,
p. 315.]

By beans he meant the good works to be performed before Our Lord
should come in the clouds to judge the quick and the dead. Now it was
important to sow those good works quickly, for the harvest-tide was
drawing nigh. The coming of Antichrist was but shortly to precede the
end of the world and the consummation of the ages. In the month of
April, 1429, Friar Richard went to Paris; the Synod of the Province of
Sens was then holding its final session. It is possible that the good
Friar was summoned to the great city by the Bishop of Troyes who was
present at the Synod; but at any rate it would appear that it was not
the rights of the Gallican Church the wandering monk went there to
defend.[1399]

[Footnote 1399: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, p. 233. Labbe,
Boutiot.]

On the 16th of April, he preached his first sermon at
Sainte-Genevieve; on the next and the following days, until Sunday,
the 24th, he preached every morning, from five until ten or eleven
o'clock, in the open air, on a platform, erected against the
charnel-house of the Innocents, on the spot whereon was celebrated the
dance of death. Around the platform, about nine feet high, there
crowded five or six thousand persons, to whom he announced the speedy
coming of Antichrist and the end of the world.[1400] "In Syria," he
said, "I met bands of Jews; I asked them whither they were going, and
they replied: 'We are wending in a multitude towards Babylon, for of a
truth the Messiah is born among men, and he will restore unto us our
inheritance, and he will bring us again to the land of promise.' Thus
spake those Syrian Jews. Now Scripture teaches us that He, whom they
call the Messiah, is in truth that Antichrist, of whom it is said he
shall be born in Babylon, capital of the kingdom of Persia, he shall
be brought up at Bethsaida and in his youth he shall dwell at
Chorazin. Wherefore our Lord said: 'Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto
thee, Bethsaida.' The year 1430," added Friar Richard, "shall witness
greater marvels than have ever been seen before.[1401] The time
draweth nigh. He is born, the man of sin, the child of perdition, the
wicked one, the beast vomited forth from the abyss, the abomination of