but this is sudden. My lord, have you
no counsel? "Counsel I have none: in heaven above, or on earth beneath,
counsellor there is none now that would take a brief from _me_: all are
silent." Is it, indeed, come to this? Alas! the time is short, the tumult
is wondrous, the crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search
in it for somebody to take your brief: I know of somebody that will be your
counsel. Who is this that cometh from Domremy? Who is she that cometh in
bloody coronation robes from Rheims? Who is she that cometh with blackened
flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen? This is she, the shepherd girl,
counsellor that had none for herself, whom I choose, Bishop, for yours. She
it is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, Bishop, that
would plead for you: yes, Bishop, SHE--when heaven and earth are silent.

NOTES.

[NOTE 1.

_Arc_:--Modern France, that should know a great deal better than myself,
insists that the name is not d'Arc, _i.e._ of Arc, but _Darc_. Now it
happens sometimes, that if a person, whose position guarantees his access
to the best information, will content himself with gloomy dogmatism,
striking the table with his fist, and saying in a terrific voice--"It is
so; and there's an end of it,"--one bows deferentially; and submits. But
if, unhappily for himself, won by this docility, he relents too amiably
into reasons and arguments, probably one raises an insurrection against him
that may never be crushed; for in the fields of logic one can skirmish,
perhaps, as well as he. Had he confined himself to dogmatism; he would have
entrenched his position in darkness, and have hidden his own vulnerable
points. But coming down to base reasons, he lets in light, and one sees
where to plant the blows. Now, the worshipful reason of modern France for
disturbing the old received spelling, is--that Jean Hordal, a descendant of
_La Pucelle's_ brother, spelled the name _Darc_, in 1612. But what of that?
Beside the chances that M. Hordal might be a gigantic blockhead, it is
notorious that what small matter of spelling Providence had thought fit to
disburse amongst man in the seventeenth century, was all monopolized by
printers: in France, much more so.]

[NOTE 2.

_Those that share thy blood_:--a collateral relative of Joanna's was
subsequently ennobled by the title of _du Lys_.]

[NOTE 3.

"_Jean_."--M. Michelet asserts that there was a mystical meaning at that
era in calli