been granted a
safe-conduct to carry away the dead of the English and Burgundian side.
They tell us, among other circumstances,--such as that the French burnt
their dead, a manifest falsehood, but admirably calculated to make them
a horror to their neighbours,--that many in the ranks cursed the Maid
who had promised that they should without any doubt sleep that night
in Paris and plunder the wealthy city. The men with their safe-conduct
creeping among the dead, to recover those bodies which had fallen on
their own side, and furtively to count the fallen on the other--who were
delighted to bring a report that the Maid was no longer the fountain
of strength and blessing, but secretly cursed by her own forces--are
sinister figures groping their way through the darkness of the September
night.

Next morning, however, her wound being slight, Jeanne was up early and
in conference with Alencon, begging him to sound his trumpets and set
forth once more. "I shall not budge from here, till Paris is taken," she
said. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lost
ground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together,
there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur of
Montmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundy
in order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt this
important and welcome addition to their number exhilarated the entire
camp, in the commotion of the reveille, while each man looked to his
weapons, wiping off from breastplate and helmet the heavy dew of the
September morning, greeting the new friends and brothers-in-arms who had
come in, and arranging, with a better knowledge of the ground than that
of yesterday, the mode of attack. Jeanne would not confess that she felt
her wound, in her eagerness to begin the assault a second time. And all
were in good spirits, the disappointment of the night having blown away,
and the determination to do or die being stronger than ever. Were the
men-at-arms perhaps less amenable? Were they whispering to each other
that Jeanne had promised them Paris yesterday, and for the first time
had not kept her word? It would almost require such a fact as this to
explain what follows. For as they began to set out, the whole field
in movement, there was suddenly seen approaching another party of
cavaliers--perhaps another reinforcement like that of Montmorency? This
new band, however, consisted but of two gentleme