her, or rather, for this is too much to say, had permitted her action
where they had no power to restrain it: but they were as little
friendly, as malignant in their treatment of the Maid as ever, and more
hopeful, now that so much had been done by her means, of being able to
shake her off and pursue their fate in their own way.

The position of Charles crowned King of France with all the traditional
pomp, master of the Orleannais, with fresh bands of supporters coming in
to swell his army day by day, and Paris itself almost within his reach,
was very different from that of the discredited Dauphin at Chinon, whom
half the world believed to have no right to the crown which his own
mother had signed away from him, and who wasted his idle days in folly
to the profit of the greedy councillors who schemed and trafficked
with his enemies, and to the destruction of all his hopes. The strange
apparition of virginal purity, energy, and faith which had taken up
and saved him against his will and all his efforts had not ceased for a
moment to be hateful to La Tremouille and his party; and Charles--though
he seems to have had a certain appreciation of the Maid, and even a
liking for her frank and fearless character, apart from any faith in
her mission--was far too ready to accept the facts of the moment, and
probably to believe that, after all, his own worth and favour with
Heaven had a great deal to do with this dazzling triumph and success:
certainly he was not the man to make any stand for his deliverer. But
that she was an auxiliary too important to be sent away was reluctantly
apparent to them all. To keep her as a sort of tame angel about the
Court in order to be produced when she was wanted, to put heart into
the soldiers and frighten the English as she certainly had the gift of
doing, no doubt appeared to all as a thing desirable enough. And they
dared not let her go "because of the people," nor, may we believe,
would Alencon, Dunois, La Hire, and the rest have tolerated thus the
abandonment of their comrade. To dismiss her even at her own word would
have been impossible, and it is hard to believe that Jeanne, after that
extraordinary brief career as a triumphant general and leader, could
have gone back to her father's cottage of the village, though she
thought she would fain have done so. If we are to believe that she felt
her mission to be fulfilled, she was yet mistress of her fate to serve
France and the King as seemed b