The English believed firmly
that it was witchcraft; they could not imagine that it was God, the God
of battles, who had always been on their side, who now took the courage
out of their hearts and taught their feet to fly for the first time. It
was the devil, and the Maid herself was a wicked witch. Neither one side
nor the other believed that it was from Jeanne's excited nerves that
these great things came. There were plenty of women with excited nerves
in France, nerves much more excited than those of Jeanne, who was always
reasonable at the height of her inspiration; but to none of them did it
happen to mount the breach, to take the city, to drive the enemy--up to
that moment invincible,--flying from the field.

But it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clear
and definite message for the Maid. Their words, which she quotes, were
now promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. "Fear not,
for God will stand by you." She thought they meant that she would be
delivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, her
sacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promises
have always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved to
be the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endure
than deliverance. For the first time the Maid was often sad; she feared
nothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. Orleans and Rheims had
been clear as daylight, her "voices" had said to her "Do this" and she
had done it. Now there was no definite direction. She had to judge for
herself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she did
was what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty. This of
itself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart.
M. Fabre tells (alone among the biographers of Jeanne) that there were
symptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and ways
during the moment of triumph. Her chaplain Pasquerel wrote a letter
in her name to the Hussites, against whom the Pope was then sending
crusades, in which "I, the Maid," threatened, if they were not
converted, to come against them and give them the alternative of death
or amendment. Quicherat says that to the Count d'Armagnac who had
written to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the three
then existent Popes was the real one, she is reported to have answered
that she would tell him as soon as the English l