ere was no leaven of pride in her
sublimation, and she did not suppose that her intercourse with celestial
voices relieved her from the duty of obeying her parents. Attempts were
made to distract her mind. A young man who had courted her was induced
to say that he had a promise of marriage from her, and to claim the
fulfilment of it. Joan went before the ecclesiastical judge, made
affirmation that she had given no promise, and without difficulty gained
her cause. Everybody believed and respected her.

[Illustration: Joan of Arc in her Father's Garden----91]

In a village hard by Domremy she had an uncle whose wife was near her
confinement; she got herself invited to go and nurse her aunt, and
thereupon she opened her heart to her uncle, repeating to him a popular
saying, which had spread indeed throughout the country: "Is it not said
that a woman shall ruin France, and a young maid restore it?" She
pressed him to take her to Vaucouleurs to Sire Robert de Baudricourt,
captain of the bailiwick, for she wished to go to the _dauphin_ and carry
assistance to him. Her uncle gave way, and on the 13th of May, 1428, he
did take her to Vaucouleurs. "I come on behalf of my Lord," said she to
Sire de Baudricourt, "to bid you send word to the _dauphin_ to keep
himself well in hand, and not give battle to his foes, for my Lord will
presently give him succor." "Who is thy lord?" asked Baudricourt. "The
King of Heaven," answered Joan. Baudricourt set her down for mad, and
urged her uncle to take her back to her parents "with a good slap o' the
face."

In July, 1428, a fresh invasion of Burgundians occurred at Domremy, and
redoubled the popular excitement there. Shortly afterwards, the report
touching the siege of Orleans arrived there. Joan, more and more
passionately possessed with her idea, returned to Vaucouleurs. "I must
go," said she to Sire de Baudricourt, "for to raise the siege of Orleans.
I will go, should I have to wear off my legs to the knee." She had
returned to Vaucouleurs without taking leave of her parents. "Had I
possessed," said she, in 1431, to her judges at Rouen, "a hundred fathers
and a hundred mothers, and had I been a king's daughter, I should have
gone." Baudricourt, impressed without being convinced, did not oppose
her remaining at Vaucouleurs, and sent an account of this singular young
girl to Duke Charles of Lorraine, at Nancy, and perhaps even, according
to some chronicles, to the king's