wellers in Abbeville a slander and a cause of
suspicion. When the Mayor and the aldermen heard of this speech they
ordered Le Sourd to be thrown into prison. Le Petit must have said
something similar, for he too was imprisoned.[1886]

[Footnote 1886: Pardon granted to Le Sourd and Jehannin Daix, in
_Trial_, vol. v, pp. 142-145.]

By saying that divers of his fellow-citizens were suspect of heresy,
Le Sourd put them in danger of being sought out by the Bishop and the
Inquisitor as heretics and sorcerers of notoriously evil repute. As
for the Maid, she must have been suspect indeed, for a smell of
burning to be caused by the mere fact of being her partisan.

While Friar Richard and his spiritual daughters were thus threatened
with a bad end should they fall into the hands of the English or
Burgundians, serious troubles were agitating the sisterhood. On the
subject of Catherine, Jeanne entered into an open dispute with her
spiritual father. Friar Richard wanted the holy dame of La Rochelle to
be set to work. Fearing lest his advice should be adopted, Jeanne
wrote to her King to tell him what to do with the woman, to wit that
he should send her home to her husband and children.

When she came to the King the first thing she had to say to him was:
"Catherine's doings are nought but folly and futility."

Friar Richard made no attempt to hide from the Maid his profound
displeasure.[1887] He was thought much of at court, and it was
doubtless with the consent of the Royal Council that he was
endeavouring to compass the employment of Dame Catherine. The Maid had
succeeded. Why should not another of the illuminated succeed?

[Footnote 1887: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 107.]

Meanwhile the Council had by no means renounced the services Jeanne
was rendering to the French cause. Even after the misfortunes of Paris
and of La Charite, there were many who now as before held her power to
be supernatural; and there is reason to believe that there was a party
at Court intending still to employ her.[1888] And even if they had
wished to discard her she was now too intimately associated with the
royal lilies for her rejection not to involve them too in dishonour.
On the 29th of December, 1429, at Mehun-sur-Yevre, the King gave her a
charter of nobility sealed with the great seal in green wax, with a
double pendant, on a strip of red and green silk.[1889]

[Footnote 1888: _Ibid._, vol. iii, p. 84; vol. iv, pp. 312 _et passim_.
A. de Villaret,