de Fierbois, between Loches
and Chinon, in a friendly country. And a strange thing happened later in
that church.

From Fierbois Joan made some clerk write to the king that she was coming
to help him, and that she would know him among all his men. Probably it
was here that she wrote to beg her parents' pardon, and they forgave
her, she says. Meanwhile news reached the people then besieged in
Orleans that a marvellous Maiden was riding to their rescue. On March 6
Joan arrived in Chinon, where for two or three days the king's advisers
would not let him see her. At last they yielded, and she went straight
up to him, and when he denied that he was the king, she told him that
she knew well who he was.

'There is the king,' said Charles, pointing to a richly dressed noble.

'No, fair sire. You are he!'

Still, it was not easy to believe. Joan stayed at Chinon in the house of
a noble lady. The young Duc d'Alencon was on her side from the first,
bewitched by her noble horsemanship, which she had never learned. Great
people came to see her, but, when she was alone, she wept and prayed.
The king sent messengers to inquire about her at Domremy, but time was
going on, and Orleans was not relieved.

HOW JOAN THE MAID SHOWED A SIGN TO THE KING

[Illustration: JOAN TELLS THE KING HIS SECRET]

Joan was weary of being asked questions. One day she went to Charles and
said, 'Gentle Dauphin, why do you delay to believe me? I tell you that
God has taken pity on you and your people, at the prayer of St. Louis
and St. Charlemagne. And I will tell you, by your leave, something
which will show you that you should believe me.'

Then she told him secretly something which, as he said, none could know
but God and himself. A few months later, in July, a man about the court
wrote a letter, in which he declares that none knows what Joan told the
king, but he was plainly as glad as if something had been revealed to
him by the Holy Spirit. We have three witnesses of this, one of them is
the famous Dunois, to whom the king himself told what happened.

What did Joan say to the king, and what was the sign? About this her
enemies later examined her ten times. She told them from the very first
that she would never let them know; that, if they made her speak, what
she spoke would not be the truth. At last she told them a kind of
parable about an angel and a crown, which neither was nor was meant to
be taken as true. It was the king's secret, and J