ave to be
living alone among men-at-arms, and she thought that it was more modest
to wear armour like the rest. Also her favourite saint, St. Margaret,
had done this once when in danger. St. Marina had worn a monk's clothes
when obliged to live in a monastery. The same thing is told of St.
Eugenia.[9] Besides, in all the romances of chivalry, and the favourite
poems of knights and ladies, we find fair maidens fighting in arms like
men, or travelling dressed as pages, and nobody ever thought the worse
of them. Therefore this foolish charge of the English against Joan the
Maid was a mere piece of cruel hypocrisy.

HOW JOAN THE MAID RODE TO CHINON

On February 23, 1429, the gate of the little castle of Vaucouleurs, 'the
Gate of France,' which is still standing, was thrown open. Seven
travellers rode out, among them two squires, Jean de Nouillompont and
Bertrand de Poulengy, with their attendants, and Joan the Maid. 'Go, and
let what will come of it come!' said Robert de Baudricourt. He did not
expect much to come of it. It was a long journey--they were eleven days
on the road--and a dangerous. But Joan laughed at danger. 'God will
clear my path to the king, for to this end I was born.' Often they rode
by night, stopping at monasteries when they could. Sometimes they slept
out under the sky. Though she was so young and so beautiful, with the
happiness of her long desire in her eyes, and the glory of her future
shining on her, these two young gentlemen never dreamed of paying their
court to her and making love, as in romances they do, for they
regarded her 'as if she had been an angel.' 'They were in awe of her,'
they said, long afterwards, long after the angels had taken Joan to be
with their company in heaven. And all the knights who had seen her said
the same. Dunois and d'Aulon and the beautiful Duc d'Alencon, '_le beau
Duc_' as Joan called him, they all said that she was 'a thing enskied
and sainted.' So on they rode, six men and a maid, through a country
full of English and Burgundian soldiery. There were four rivers to
cross, Marne, Aube, Seine, and Yonne, and the rivers were 'great and
mickle o' spate,' running red with the rains from bank to bank, so that
they could not ford the streams, but must go by unfriendly towns, where
alone there were bridges. Joan would have liked to stay and go to church
in every town, but this might not be. However, she heard mass thrice at
the church of her favourite saint, Catherine