see what was in her mind--so she answered herself: "The
Dauphin's council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the
Dauphin's weal, or are they friends?"

"Enemies," answered the Sieur Bertrand.

"If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose
traitors and tricksters to send it by?"

I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none
found anything to say. Then she went on:

"They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get
my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its
purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this--to move the
Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me
to the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact
words, and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and
supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make
them live, where were the value of that argument--whom could it convince?
Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear."

The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to
himself:

"She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is said."

It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was
the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think
how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to
penetrate the cunning devices of a King's trained advisers and defeat
them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and
spoke no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage,
fortitude, endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties--in
all things, indeed, that make a good and trusty soldier and perfect
him for his post; now we were beginning to feel that maybe there
were greatnesses in her brain that were even greater than these great
qualities of the heart. It set us thinking.

What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was
obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her own and
stand her ground like that, and he asserted himself sufficiently to put
his respect into an act instead of into polite and empty words. He moved
Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her, with us her servants, in the
Castle of Courdray, personally confiding her to the care of Madame de
Bellier, wife of old Raoul de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course,
this ro