r ate nor drank. But
though she was so humbled by the effects of the fall, "she was comforted
by St. Catherine, who bade her confess and implore the mercy of God" for
her rash disobedience--and repeated the promise that before Martinmas
Compiegne should be relieved. Jeanne did not perhaps in her rebellion
deserve this encouragement; but the heavenly ladies were kind and
pitiful and did not stand upon their dignity. The wonderful thing was
that Jeanne recovered perfectly from this tremendous leap.

The earthly ladies, though so completely on the other side, were
scarcely less kind to the Maid. They visited her daily, carried their
news to her, were very friendly and sweet: and no doubt other visitors
came to make the acquaintance of a prisoner so wonderful. There was one
point on which they were very urgent, and this was about her dress. It
shamed and troubled them to see her in the costume of a man. Jeanne had
her good reasons for that, which perhaps she did not care to tell
them, fearing to shock the ears of a demoiselle of Luxembourg with the
suggestion of dangers of which she knew nothing. No doubt it was true
that while doing the serious work of war, as she said afterwards, it was
best that she should be dressed as a man; but Jeanne had reason to know
besides, that it was safer, among the rough comrades and gaolers who now
surrounded her, to wear the tight-fitting and firmly fastened dress of
a soldier. She answered the ladies and their remonstrances with all
the grace of a courtier. Could she have done it she would rather have
yielded the point to them, she said, than to any one else in France,
except the Queen. The women wherever she went were always faithful
to this young creature, so pure-womanly in her young angel-hood and
man-hood. The poor followed to kiss her hands or her armour, the rich
wooed her with tender flatteries and persuasions. There is not record in
all her career of any woman who was not her friend.

For the last dreary month of that winter she was sent to the fortress
of Crotoy on the Somme, for what reason we are not told, probably to
be more near the English into whose hands she was about to be given
up: again another shameful bargain in which the guilt lies with the
Burgundians and not with the English. If Charles I. was sold as we Scots
all indignantly deny, the shame of the sale was on our nation, not on
England, whom nobody has ever blamed for the transaction. The sale of
Jeanne was bruta