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courtiers more richly dressed than he. According to some chroniclers,
Joan had demanded that "she should not be deceived, and should have
pointed out to her him to whom she was to speak;" others affirm that she
went straight to the king, whom she had never seen, "accosting him humbly
and simply, like a poor little shepherdess," says an eye-witness, and,
according to another account, "making the usual bends and reverences as
if she had been brought up at court." Whatever may have been her outward
behavior, "Gentle _dauphin_," she said to the king (for she did not think
it right to call him king so long as he was not crowned), "my name is Joan
the maid; the King of Heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be
anointed and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of
the King of Heaven, who is King of France. It is God's pleasure that our
enemies the English should depart to their own country; if they depart no
evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours."
Charles was impressed without being convinced, as so many others had been
before, or were, as he was, on that very day. He saw Joan again several
times. She did not delude herself as to the doubts he still entertained.
"Gentle _dauphin_," she said to him one day, "why do you not believe me?
I say unto you that God hath compassion on you, your kingdom, and your
people; St. Louis and Charlemagne are kneeling before Him, making prayer
for you, and I will say unto you, so please you, a thing which will give
you to understand that you ought to believe me." Charles gave her
audience on this occasion in the presence, according to some accounts, of
four witnesses, the most trusted of his intimates, who swore to reveal
nothing, and, according to others, completely alone. "What she said to
him there is none who knows," wrote Alan Chartier, a short time after [in
July, 1429], "but it is quite certain that he was all radiant with joy
thereat as at a revelation from the Holy Spirit." M. Wallop, after a
scrupulous sifting of evidence, has given the following exposition of
this mysterious interview. "Sire de Boisy," he says, "who was in his
youth one of the gentlemen of the bed-chamber on the most familiar terms
with Charles VII., told Peter Sala, giving the king himself as his
authority for the story, that one day, at the period of his greatest
adversity, the prince, vainly looking for a remedy against so many
troubles, entered in the mo