st as their legs would carry them,
fled before a girl. This was hard to be borne, and these taciturn
English were forever pondering over the disgrace. They had been afraid
of a girl, and it was not very certain but that, chained as she was,
they felt fear of her still, though, seemingly, not of her, but of the
devil, whose agent she was. At least, they endeavored both to believe
and to have it believed so.

But there was an obstacle in the way of this, for she was said to be a
virgin; and it was a notorious and well-ascertained fact that the devil
could not make a compact with a virgin. The coolest head among the
English, Bedford,[82] the regent, resolved to have the point cleared up;
and his wife, the Duchess, intrusted the matter to some matrons, who
declared Jeanne to be a maid; a favorable declaration which turned
against her by giving rise to another superstitious notion; to wit, that
her virginity constituted her strength, her power, and that to deprive
her of it was to disarm her, was to break the charm, and lower her to
the level of other women.

The poor girl's only defence against such a danger had been wearing male
attire; though, strange to say, no one had ever seemed able to
understand her motive for wearing it. All, both friends and enemies,
were scandalized by it. At the outset, she had been obliged to explain
her reasons to the woman of Poitiers; and when made prisoner, and under
the care of the ladies of Luxemburg, those excellent persons prayed her
to clothe herself as honest girls were wont to do. Above all, the
English ladies, who have always made a parade of chastity and modesty,
must have considered her so disguising herself monstrous and
insufferably indecent. The Duchess of Bedford sent her female attire;
but by whom? By a man, a tailor. The fellow, with impudent familiarity,
was about to pass it over her head, and, when she pushed him away, laid
his unmannnerly hand upon her--his tailor's hand on that hand which had
borne the flag of France. She boxed his ears.

If women could not understand this feminine question, how much less
could priests! They quoted the text of a council held in the fourth
century, which anathematized such changes of dress; not seeing that the
prohibition specially applied to a period when manners had been barely
retrieved from pagan impurities. The doctors belonging to the party of
Charles VII, the apologists of the Pucelle, find exceeding difficulty in
justifying her