herine replied gently that He would Himself care for
these _bons amis_, and even promised that "before the St. Martin"
relief would come. But Jeanne had probably by this time--in her great
disappointment and loneliness, and with the sense in her of so much
power to help were she only free--got beyond her own control. They bade
her to be patient. One of them, amid their exhortations to accept her
fate cheerfully, and not to be astonished at it, seems to have conveyed
to her mind the impression that she should not be delivered till she had
seen the King of England. "Truly I will not see him! I would rather die
than fall into the hands of the English," cried Jeanne in her petulance.
The King of England is spoken of always, it is curious to note, as if
he had been a great, severe ruler like his father, never as the child he
really was. But Jeanne in her helplessness and impotence was impatient
even with her saints. Day by day the news came in from Compiegne,
all that was favourable to the Burgundians received with joy and
thanksgiving by the ladies of Luxembourg, while the captive consumed her
heart with vain indignation. At last Jeanne would seem to have wrought
herself up to the most desperate of expedients. Whether her room was in
the donjon, or whether she was allowed sufficient freedom in the house
to mount to the battlements there, we are not informed--probably the
latter was the case: for it was from the top of the tower that the rash
girl at last flung herself down, carried away by what sudden frenzy
of alarm or sting of evil tidings can never be known. Probably she had
hoped that a miracle would be wrought on her behalf, and that faith
was all that was wanted, as on so many other occasions. Perhaps she had
heard of the negotiations to sell her to the English, which would give a
keener urgency to her determination to get free; all that appears in the
story, however, is her wild anxiety about Compiegne and her _bons amis_.
How she escaped destruction no one knows. She was rescued for a more
tremendous and harder fate.

The Maid was taken up as dead from the foot of the tower (the height is
estimated at sixty feet); but she was not dead, nor even seriously hurt.
Her frame, so slight that she had been able to slip between the bars put
up to secure her, had so little solidity that the shock would seem
to have been all that ailed her. She was stunned and unconscious and
remained so far some time; and for three days neithe