; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot
what I said."

She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that
embarrassment. I hadn't misheard her at all, and hadn't forgotten.
I changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and
entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and
who was going to surrender anything to the King?--at that time a stick,
a cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of
Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck
a blow.

Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me)
there, if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of
that piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present--and
not only present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but
destined at a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions
smuggled into it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal infamy!

"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?"

"I do."

"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?"

Ah, then she was indignant!

"No! Not even these chains"--and she shook them--"not even these chains
can chill the hopes that I uttered there. And more!"--she rose, and
stood a moment with a divine strange light kindling in her face, then
her words burst forth as in a flood--"I warn you now that before seven
years a disaster will smite the English, oh, many fold greater than the
fall of Orleans! and--"

"Silence! Sit down!"

"--and then, soon after, they will lose all France!"

Now consider these things. The French armies no longer existed. The
French cause was standing still, our King was standing still, there was
no hint that by and by the Constable Richemont would come forward and
take up the great work of Joan of Arc and finish it. In face of all
this, Joan made that prophecy--made it with perfect confidence--and it
came true. For within five years Paris fell--1436--and our King marched
into it flying the victor's flag. So the first part of the prophecy was
then fulfilled--in fact, almost the entire prophecy; for, with Paris in
our hands, the fulfilment of the rest of it was assured.

Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a single town--Calais.

Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of Joan's. At the time
that she wanted to take Paris and could have done it with ease if our
King had but consented, she said that that was the