t assurance the
good wives of those days undertook the solution of a problem which had
appeared difficult to King Solomon in all his wisdom.

[Footnote 784: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 102. Vallet de Viriville, article
_Le Macon_, in _Nouvelle biographie generale_.]

Jeanne of Domremy was found to be a maid pure and intact.[785]

[Footnote 785: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 210. Eberhard Windecke, p. 157.
Morosini, p. 99.]

While she herself was being subjected to the interrogatories of
doctors and the examination of matrons, certain clerics who had been
despatched to her native province were there prosecuting an inquiry
concerning her birth, her life, and her morals.[786] The ecclesiastics
had been chosen from those mendicant Friars[787] who could pass freely
along the highways and byways of the enemy's country without exciting
the suspicion of English and Burgundians. And, indeed, they were in no
way molested. From Domremy and from Vaucouleurs they brought back sure
testimony to the humility, the devotion, the honesty, and the
simplicity of Jeanne. But, most important, they had found no
difficulty in gleaning certain pious tales, such as commonly adorned
the childhood of saints. To these monks we must attribute an important
share in the development of those legends of Jeanne's early years,
which were so soon to become popular. From this time, apparently,
dates the story that when Jeanne was in her seventh year, wolves
spared her sheep, and birds of the woods came at her call and ate
crumbs from her lap.[788] Such saintly flowers suggest a Franciscan
origin; among them are the wolf of Gubbio and the birds preached to by
Saint Francis. These mendicants may also have furnished examples of
the Maid's prophetic gift. They may have spread abroad the story that,
when she was at Vaucouleurs, on the day of the Battle of the Herrings,
she knew of the great hurt inflicted on the French at Rouvray.[789]
The success of such little stories was immediate and complete.

[Footnote 786: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 82.]

[Footnote 787: Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. cxliii.
_Trial_, vol. ii, p. 397.]

[Footnote 788: Letter from Perceval de Boulainvilliers to the Duke of
Milan, in the _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 115, 121. _Journal d'un bourgeois
de Paris_, p. 237.]

[Footnote 789: _Journal du siege_, p. 48. _Chronique de la Pucelle_,
p. 275.]

After this examination and inquiry, the doctors came to the following
conclusions: "The King, behol