nted to receive it?"

"God has appointed me to receive it, and another's commandment may not
take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for his grace the
Dauphin."

"Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and waste no
more time about it."

"You err indeed, most reverend fathers in God, and it is not well. I am
not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the Dauphin to
his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his head."

"Is that the message you send to the King?"

But Joan only said, in the simple fashion which was her wont:

"Ye will pardon me for reminding you again--but I have no message to send
to any one."

The King's messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the place
without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they passed.

Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster. Our
precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan's
conduct, she who had ben so wise until this fatal hour. At last the Sieur
Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this great chance to
get her message to the King go by.

"Who sent them here?" she asked.

"The King."

"Who moved the King to send them?" She waited for an answer; none came,
for we began to see what was in her mind--so she answered herself: "The
Dauphin's council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the
Dauphin's weal, or are they friends?"

"Enemies," answered the Sieur Bertrand.

"If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose
traitors and tricksters to send it by?"

I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none
found anything to say. Then she went on:

"They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my
message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its
purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this--to move the
Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me to
the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact words,
and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and
supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make
them live, where were the value of that argument--whom could it convince?
Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear."

The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to
himself:

"She was right and wise, and we are but dul