e power of the Governor and city had they
chosen. Who can answer so dreadful a suggestion? it is too much shame
to human nature to believe it. Perhaps within Compiegne as without, they
were too slow to perceive the supreme moment, too much overwhelmed to
snatch any chance of rescue till it was too late.

Happily we have no light upon the tumult around the prisoner, the ugly
triumph, the shouts and exultation of the captors who had seized the
sorceress at last; nor upon the thoughts of Jeanne, with her threatened
doom fulfilled and unknown horrors before her, upon which imagination
must have thrown the most dreadful light, however strongly her courage
was sustained by the promise of succour from on high. She had not been
sent upon this mission as of old. No heavenly voice had said to her
"Go and deliver Compiegne." She had undertaken that warfare on her own
charges with no promise to encourage her, only the certainty of being
overthrown "before the St. Jean." But the St. Jean was still far off, a
long month of summer days between her and that moment of fate! So far
as we can see Jeanne showed no unseemly weakness in this dark hour. One
account tells us that she held her sword high over her head declaring
that it was given by a higher than any who could claim its surrender
there. But she neither struggled nor wept. Not a word against her
constancy and courage could any one, then or after, find to say. The
Burgundian chronicler tells us one thing, the French another. "The Maid,
easily recognised by her costume of crimson and by the standard which
she carried in her hand, alone continued to defend herself," says one;
but that we are sure could not have been the case as long as d'Aulon,
who accompanied her, was still able to keep on his horse. "She yielded
and gave her parole to Lyonnel, batard de Wandomme," says another; but
Jeanne herself declares that she gave her faith to no one, reserving
to herself the right to escape if she could. In that dark evening
scene nothing is clear except the fact that the Maid was taken, to the
exultation and delight of her captors and to the terror and grief of the
unhappy town, vainly screaming with all its bells to arms,--and with its
sons and champions by hundreds dying under the English lances and in the
dark waves of the Oise.

The archer or whoever it was who secured this prize, took Jeanne back,
along the bloody road with its relics of the fight, to Margny, the
Burgundian camp, wher