this wonderful Maid, the youngest, perhaps, and most ignorant of the assembly, yet meeting all with a modest and unabashed countenance, true, pure, and natural,--a far greater miracle in her simplicity and noble steadfastness than even in the wonders she had done. (1) She was in reality detained two days, which fact, no doubt, she judged to be an unimportant detail. (2) Probably meaning, had been present when the voices came to her and had perceived her state of listening and abstraction. (3) This was her special friend, Gerard of Epinal--her _compère_ and gossip; was it jesting beguiled by some childish recollection, or mock threat of youthful days that she said this? (4) An answer evidently given in the vagueness of imperfect knowledge, meaning a very great number. (5) Quicherat gives a note on this subject to point out that there was really was but one Pope at this moment, the question having been settled by the abdication of Clement VIII., Benedict XIV. being a mere impostor. We cannot believe, however, that this historical cutting of the knot could be known to Jeanne. She probably felt only, with her fine instinct, that there could be but one Pope, and that to be deceived on such a matter ought to have been a thing impossible to all those priests and learned men; as a matter of fact the three claimants, on account of whom the Comte d'Armagnac had appealed to her, were no longer existing at the time he wrote. (6) She meant Paris, which was lost by the English, according to her prophecy within the time named. (7) It should here be noted that Jeanne's sign to the King being, as he afterwards declared, the answer to his most private devotions and the final setting at rest of a doubt which might have injured him much had it been known that he entertained it--it would have been dishonourable on her part and a great wrong to him had she revealed it. (8) The translation of M. Fabre is now, I believe, reprinted, but it is not satisfactory. CHAPTER XIV --THE EXAMINATION IN PRISON. LENT, 1431.