ght well be, for, like other kings, he
was used to getting nothing out of people's talk but guarded phrases,
colorless and non-committal, or carefully tinted to tally with the color
of what he said himself; and so this kind of conversation only vexes and
bores, and is wearisome; but Joan's talk was fresh and free, sincere and
honest, and unmarred by timorous self-watching and constraint. She
said the very thing that was in her mind, and said it in a plain,
straightforward way. One can believe that to the King this must have
been like fresh cold water from the mountains to parched lips used to
the water of the sun-baked puddles of the plain.

After dinner Joan so charmed the Duke with her horsemanship and lance
practice in the meadows by the Castle of Chinon whither the King
also had come to look on, that he made her a present of a great black
war-steed.

Every day the commission of bishops came and questioned Joan about her
Voices and her mission, and then went to the King with their report.
These pryings accomplished but little. She told as much as she
considered advisable, and kept the rest to herself. Both threats and
trickeries were wasted upon her. She did not care for the threats, and
the traps caught nothing. She was perfectly frank and childlike about
these things. She knew the bishops were sent by the King, that their
questions were the King's questions, and that by all law and custom a
King's questions must be answered; yet she told the King in her naive
way at his own table one day that she answered only such of those
questions as suited her.

The bishops finally concluded that they couldn't tell whether Joan was
sent by God or not. They were cautious, you see. There were two
powerful parties at Court; therefore to make a decision either way would
infallibly embroil them with one of those parties; so it seemed to them
wisest to roost on the fence and shift the burden to other shoulders.
And that is what they did. They made final report that Joan's case was
beyond their powers, and recommended that it be put into the hands of
the learned and illustrious doctors of the University of Poitiers. Then
they retired from the field, leaving behind them this little item of
testimony, wrung from them by Joan's wise reticence: they said she was
a "gentle and simple little shepherdess, very candid, but not given to
talking."

It was quite true--in their case. But if they could have looked back
and seen her with us in