emn pomps and ceremonies, the great concourse of
renowned personages, the brilliant costumes, and the other splendors
of the Court, that she, a simple country-maid, and all unused to such
things, would be overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure.

No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would
Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its
small King and his butterfly dukelets?--she who had spoken face to face
with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue
of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon
myriads, like a measureless fan of light, a glory like the glory of the
sun streaming from each of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance
filling the deeps of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not.

Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression upon
the King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her clothed in the
richest stuffs, wrought upon the princeliest pattern, and set off with
jewels; but in that she had to be disappointed, of course, Joan not
being persuadable to it, but begging to be simply and sincerely dressed,
as became a servant of God, and one sent upon a mission of a serious
sort and grave political import. So then the gracious Queen imagined and
contrived that simple and witching costume which I have described to
you so many times, and which I cannot think of even now in my dull age
without being moved just as rhythmical and exquisite music moves one;
for that was music, that dress--that is what it was--music that one saw
with the eyes and felt in the heart. Yes, she was a poem, she was a
dream, she was a spirit when she was clothed in that.

She kept that raiment always, and wore it several times upon occasions
of state, and it is preserved to this day in the Treasury of Orleans,
with two of her swords, and her banner, and other things now sacred
because they had belonged to her.

At the appointed time the Count of Vendome, a great lord of the court,
came richly clothed, with his train of servants and assistants, to
conduct Joan to the King, and the two knights and I went with her, being
entitled to this privilege by reason of our official positions near her
person.

When we entered the great audience-hall, there it all was just as I have
already painted it. Here were ranks of guards in shining armor and with
polished halberds; two sides of the hall were l