see how
fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the fire
when a man's house was burning down, and they waited till they could send
into another country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or
not, before letting him try.

So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways, but not
in all, for we had one great anticipation in front of us; we had never
seen a king, and now some day we should have that prodigious spectacle to
see and to treasure in our memories all our lives; so we were on the
lookout, and always eager and watching for the chance. The others were
doomed to wait longer than I, as it turned out. One day great news
came--the Orleans commissioners, with Yolande and our knights, had at
last turned the council's position and persuaded the King to see Joan.

Joan received the immense news gratefully but without losing her head,
but with us others it was otherwise; we could not eat or sleep or do any
rational thing for the excitement and the glory of it. During two days
our pair of noble knights were in distress and trepidation on Joan's
account, for the audience was to be at night, and they were afraid that
Joan would be so paralyzed by the glare of light from the long files of
torches, the solemn pomps and ceremonies, the great concourse of renowned
personages, the brilliant costumes, and the other splendors of the Court,
that she, a simple country-maid, and all unused to such things, would be
overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure.

No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would
Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its
small King and his butterfly dukelets?--she who had spoken face to face
with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue
of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon
myriads, like a measureless fan of light, a glory like the glory of the
sun streaming from each of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance
filling the deeps of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not.

Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression upon the
King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her clothed in the
richest stuffs, wrought upon the princeliest pattern, and set off with
jewels; but in that she had to be disappointed, of course, Joan not being
persuadable to it, but begging to be simply and sincerely dressed, as
beca