-day--to
fetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks,
the Sainte Ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil of
consecration had been sent to Clovis out of Heaven. These noble
messengers were the "hostages" of this sacred charge, engaging
themselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till it
was restored to its appointed guardians. This vow having been made,
the Abbot of St. Remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by his
monks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendid
canopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards the
cathedral under the escort of the Knights Hostages, blazing also in the
flashes of their armour. This procession was met half-way, before the
Church of St. Denis, by another, that of the Archbishop and his train,
to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to the
cathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd.

The Maid had her occupations this July morning like the rest. We hear
nothing of any interview with her father, or with Durand the good uncle
who had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was Durand
who was sent for to the King and questioned as to Jeanne's life in her
childhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that Jacques d'Arc
still stood aloof, _dour_, as a Scotch peasant father might have been,
suspicious of his daughter's intimacy with all these fine people, and
in no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little less
than shame to such rugged folk. And there were his two sons who would
take him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplace
he was more at home than with Jeanne. What the Maid had to do on the
morning of the coronation day was something very different from any home
talk with her relations. She who felt herself commissioned not only to
lead the armies of France, but to deal with her princes and take part in
her councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the Duke of
Burgundy. She had summoned the English by letter three times repeated,
to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by God's will were
French. It was with still better reason that she summoned Philip of
Burgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal the
breach which had torn France in two:

JHESUS, MARIA.

High and redoubtable Prince, Duke of Burgundy. Jeanne the Maid requires
on the part of the King of Heave