han yours. You
thought to deceive me, and you have deceived yourselves, for I am
bringing you the best succor that ever had knight, or town, or city, and
that is, the good-will of God and succor from the King of Heaven; not,
assuredly, for love of me; it is from God only that it proceeds."

She wished to remain with the troops until they could enter the city,
but Dunois urged her to cross the stream at once, with such portion of
the convoy as the boats might convey immediately.

"Orleans would count it for naught," he said, "if they received the
victuals without the Maid."

She decided to go, and crossed the stream with two hundred men-at-arms
and part of the supplies. At eight o'clock that evening she entered the
city, on horseback, in full armor, her banner preceding her, beside her
Dunois, behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the most
distinguished citizens. The population hailed her coming with shouts of
joy, crowding on the procession, torch in hand, so closely that her
banner was set on fire. Joan made her horse leap forward with the skill
of a practised horseman, and herself extinguished the flame.

It was a remarkable change in her life. Three years before, a simple
peasant child, she had been listening to the "voices" in her father's
garden at Domremy. Now, the associate of princes and nobles, and the
last hope of the kingdom, she was entering a beleaguered city at the
head of an army, amid the plaudits of the population, and followed by
the prayers of France. She was but seventeen years old, still a mere
girl, yet her coming had filled her countrymen with hope and depressed
their foes with dread. Such was the power of religious belief in that
good mediaeval age.

The arrival of the Maid was announced to the besiegers by a herald, who
bore a summons from her to the English, bidding them to leave the land
and give up the keys of the cities which they had wrongfully taken,
under peril of being visited by God's judgment. They detained and
threatened to burn the herald, as a warning to Joan, the sorceress, as
they deemed her. Yet such was their terror that they allowed the armed
force still outside the city to enter unmolested, through their
intrenchments.

The warning Joan had sent them by herald she now repeated in person,
mounting a bastion and bidding the English, in a loud voice, to begone,
else woe and shame would come upon them.

The commandant of the bastille opposite, Sir William