, the _Te Deum_ was sung at Notre Dame. At the Court
Charles and his counsellors amused themselves with another prophet, a
shepherd from the hills who was to rival Jeanne's best achievements, but
never did so. Only the towns which she had delivered had still a tender
thought for Jeanne. At Tours the entire population appeared in
the streets with bare feet, singing the _Miserere_ in penance and
affliction. Orleans and Blois made public prayers for her safety.
Rheims, in which there was much independent interest in Jeanne and her
truth, had to be specially soothed by a letter from the Archbishop, in
which he made out with great cleverness that it was the fault of Jeanne
alone that she was taken. "She did nothing but by her own will, without
obeying the commandments of God," he says; "she would hear no counsel,
but followed her own pleasure,"; and it is in this letter that we hear
of the shepherd lad who was to replace Jeanne, and that it was his
opinion or revelation that God had suffered the Maid to be taken because
of her growing pride, because she loved fine clothes, and preferred her
own will to any guidance. We do not know whether this contented the
city of Rheims; similar reasoning however seems to have silenced France.
Nobody uttered a protest, nor struck a blow; the mournful procession of
Tours, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, the
prayers of Orleans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions we
know of. Otherwise there was lifted in France neither voice nor hand to
avert her doom.

(1) The three camps must have formed a sort of irregular
triangle. The English at Venette being only half a mile from
the gates of Compiegne.

CHAPTER X -- THE CAPTIVE. MAY, 1430-JAN., 1431.

We have here to remark a complete suspension of all the ordinary laws
at once of chivalry and of honest warfare. Jeanne had been captured as
a general at the head of her forces. She was a prisoner of war. Such
a prisoner ordinarily, even in the most cruel ages, is in no
bodily danger. He is worth more alive than dead--a great ransom
perhaps--perhaps the very end of the warfare, and the accomplishment
of everything it was intended to gain: at least he is most valuable to
exchange for other important prisoners on the opposite side. It was like
taking away so much personal property to kill a prisoner, an outrage
deeply resented by his captor and unjustified by any law. It was true
that Jeanne her