side making this investigation; but that of course is only a pictorial
suggestion, though it might for a moment be the fact. She remained
there, however, from two in the afternoon till night, when she was
forced away. The struggle must have raged around while she stood on the
dark edge of the ditch probing the muddy water to see where it could
best be crossed, shouting directions to her men in that voice _assez
femme_, which penetrated the noise of battle, and summoning the active
and desperate enemy overhead. "_Renty! Renty!_" she cried as she had
done at Orleans--"_surrender to the King of France!_"

We hear nothing now of the white armour; it must have been dimmed and
worn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chances
of the war; but it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast,
on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheering
the men, a spot of light still, amid all the steely glimmering of the
mail-coats and the dark downpour of that iron rain. Half a hundred
war cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of "Witch, Devil,
Ribaude," and names still more insulting to her purity, could not
silence that treble shout, the most wonderful, surely, that ever ran
through such an infernal clamour, so prodigious, the chronicler says,
that it was a marvel to hear it. _De par Dieu, Rendez vous, rendez vous,
au roy de France_. If as we believe she never struck a blow, the aspect
of that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still. While the
boldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves and what
beams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stood
without even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given,
cheering them on, exposed to every shot.

The fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success on
the part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothing
to discourage them, as the fight raged on. Few were wounded,
notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverins, "by the grace
of God and the good luck of the Maid." But towards the evening Jeanne
herself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh; she
seems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when a
still greater misfortune befell: her standard-bearer was hit, first in
the foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from the
wound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet. What happened to
t