It happened, unfortunately for her father’s persuasions, and most
unfortunately for the poor girl, too, that a party of the Dauphin’s
enemies found their way into the village while Joan’s disorder was at
this point, and burnt the chapel, and drove out the inhabitants. The
cruelties she saw committed, touched Joan’s heart and made her worse.
She said that the voices and the figures were now continually with her;
that they told her she was the girl who, according to an old prophecy,
was to deliver France; and she must go and help the Dauphin, and must
remain with him until he should be crowned at Rheims: and that she must
travel a long way to a certain lord named Baudricourt, who could and
would, bring her into the Dauphin’s presence.
As her father still said, ‘I tell thee, Joan, it is thy fancy,’ she set
off to find out this lord, accompanied by an uncle, a poor village
wheelwright and cart-maker, who believed in the reality of her visions.
They travelled a long way and went on and on, over a rough country,
full of the Duke of Burgundy’s men, and of all kinds of robbers and
marauders, until they came to where this lord was.
When his servants told him that there was a poor peasant girl named
Joan of Arc, accompanied by nobody but an old village wheelwright and
cart-maker, who wished to see him because she was commanded to help the
Dauphin and save France, Baudricourt burst out a-laughing, and bade
them send the girl away. But, he soon heard so much about her lingering
in the town, and praying in the churches, and seeing visions, and doing
harm to no one, that he sent for her, and questioned her. As she said
the same things after she had been well sprinkled with holy water as
she had said before the sprinkling, Baudricourt began to think there
might be something in it. At all events, he thought it worth while to
send her on to the town of Chinon, where the Dauphin was. So, he bought
her a horse, and a sword, and gave her two squires to conduct her. As
the Voices had told Joan that she was to wear a man’s dress, now, she
put one on, and girded her sword to her side, and bound spurs to her
heels, and mounted her horse and rode away with her two squires. As to
her uncle the wheelwright, he stood staring at his niece in wonder
until she was out of sight—as well he might—and then went home again.
The best place, too.
Joan and her two squires rode on and on, until they came to Chinon,
where she was, after some doubt, admitted into the Dauphin’s presence.
Picking him out immediately from all his court, she told him that she
came commanded by Heaven to subdue his enemies and conduct him to his
coronation at Rheims. She also told him (or he pretended so afterwards,
to make the greater impression upon his soldiers) a number of his
secrets known only to himself, and, furthermore, she said there was an
old, old sword in the cathedral of Saint Catherine at Fierbois, marked
with five old crosses on the blade, which Saint Catherine had ordered
her to wear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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