led to cross the
Loire, and was indignant when, on reaching Orleans, she discovered that
the river lay between her and the town.

Dunois, commander-in-chief in Orleans, seeing her from the ramparts,
crossed the river at once and came to give her reverent and joyful
greeting. After reproaching him and the other captains for placing more
reliance upon human prudence than upon Divine behests, she said: "I
bring you the best succor that ever knight or city had; it is the succor
of the King of Heaven, and comes not from me, but from God." It was the
29th of April, and that same evening, at eight o'clock, Jeanne entered
Orleans with provisions and an escort, the main body of the army
retiring to Blois to cross the Loire.

Orleans went mad with joy at the advent of its heaven-sent deliverer. As
she rode through the streets the crowds blocked her way, and eager
admirers rudely jostled each other in the struggle but to touch the
horse that bore her. With sweet kindliness, she thanked them, losing
none of her humility, and exhorting them to thank not her, but God and
the dauphin. For that night and the rest of her stay in Orleans she was
lodged with the wife of the treasurer of Charles d'Orleans, and slept
with one of the daughters of the house. Sturdy and healthy as she was,
the unaccustomed rough life of the camp, sleeping with her armor on and
none but men about her, had occasioned her great fatigue.

The operations of the siege had been suspended by the English, who
sullenly kept to their _bastilles_. Jeanne insisted upon an immediate
attack, and during the week that followed she was with difficulty
restrained from rash enterprises. Indeed, she could not always be
restrained, and her rashness was not infrequently rewarded with
unexpected success. Warned of the approach of English reinforcements
under Sir John Fastolf, she conjured Dunois to let her know without
delay of his coming. She suspected Dunois of intending to engage Fastolf
without her, and in her nervous eagerness to be up and doing for France
she precipitated a successful attack upon the bastilles. She had retired
to rest for a few hours in the middle of the day when the noise of a
tumult in the streets aroused her; the cry was that the French were
being slaughtered at one of the gates. Leaping from her couch, and
hardly taking time to have half of her armor buckled on, she mounted her
horse and, seizing her banner as it was reached to her from a window,
gallop