eferred to, no woman came to console the unfortunate Maid. She had
never before during all her vicissitudes been without their constant
ministrations.

One woman, the only one we ever hear of who was not the partisan and
lover of the Maid, does, however, make herself faintly seen amid the
crowd. Catherine of La Rochelle--the woman who had laid claim to saintly
visitors and voices like those of Jeanne, and who had been for a time
received and feted at the Court of Charles with vile satisfaction, as
making the loss of the Maid no such great thing--had by this time been
dropped as useless, on the appearance of the shepherd boy quoted by the
Archbishop of Rheims, and had fallen into the hands of the English: was
not she too a witch, and admirably qualified to give evidence as to the
other witch, for whose blood all around her were thirsting? Catherine
was ready to say anything that was evil of her sister sorceress. "Take
care of her," she said; "if you lose sight of her for one moment, the
devil will carry her away." Perhaps this was the cause of the guard
in Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. The
vulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony.
She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lights
that mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out again
with her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should have
been treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians.
Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. It
is profane to associate Jeanne's pure and beautiful name with that of
a mountebank. This is the only woman in all her generation, so far
as appears to us, who was not the partisan and devoted friend of the
spotless Maid.

The aspect of that old-world city of Rouen, still so old and picturesque
to the visitor of to-day, though all new since that time except the
churches, is curious and interesting to look back upon. It must have
hummed and rustled with life through every street; not only with the
English troops, and many a Burgundian man-at-arms, swaggering about,
swearing big oaths and filling the air with loud voices,--but with all
the polished bands of the doctors, men first in fame and learning of
the famous University, and beneficed priests of all classes, canons
and deans and bishops, with the countless array that followed them, the
cardinal's tonsured Court in addition, standing