the king’s confessor, “cannot you tell the king what pricketh you?” “Ah! I see,” replied Joan, with some embarrassment: “well, I will tell you. I had set me to prayer, according to my wont, and I was making complaint for that you would not believe what I said; then the voice came and said unto me, ‘Go, go, my daughter; I will be a help to thee; go.’ When this voice comes to me, I feel marvellously rejoiced; I would that it might endure forever.” She was eager and overcome. Joan and her voices were not alone in urging the king to shake off his doubts and his indolence. In church, and court, and army, allies were not wanting to the pious and valiant maid. In a written document dated the 14th of May, six days after the siege of Orleans was raised, the most Christian doctor of the age, as Gerson was called, sifted the question whether it were possible, whether it were a duty, to believe in the Maid. “Even if (which God forbid),” said he, “she should be mistaken in her hope and ours, it would not necessarily follow that what she does comes of the evil spirit, and not of God, but that rather our ingratitude was to blame. Let the party which hath a just cause take care how, by incredulity or injustice, it rendereth useless the divine succor so miraculously manifested, for God, without any change of counsel, changeth the upshot according to deserts.” Great lords and simple gentlemen, old and young warriors, were eager to go and join Joan for the salvation of the king and of France. The constable, De Richemont, banished from the court through the jealous hatred of George la Tremoille, made a pressing application there, followed by a body of men-at-arms; and, when the king refused to see him, he resolved, though continuing in disgrace, to take an active part in the war. The young Duke of Alencon, who had been a prisoner with the English since the battle of Agincourt, hurried on the payment of his ransom in order to accompany Joan as lieutenant-general of the king in the little army which was forming. His wife, the duchess, was in grief about it. “We have just spent great sums,” said she, “in buying him back from the English; if he would take my advice, he would stay at home.” “Madame,” said Joan, “I will bring him back to you safe and sound, nay, even in better contentment than at present; be not afraid.” And on this promise the duchess took heart. Du Guesciin’s widow, Joan de Laval, was still living; and she had two grandsons, Guy and Andrew de Laval, who were amongst the most zealous of those taking service in the army destined to march on Rheims. The king, to all appearance, desired to keep them near his person. “God forbid that I should do so,” wrote Guy de Laval, on the 8th of June, 1429, to those most dread dames, his grandmother and his mother; “my brother says, as also my lord the Duke d’Alencon, that a good riddance of bad rubbish would he be who should stay at home.” And he describes his first