After the deliverance of Orleans, the English assembled together a numerous army, to defend the aforesaid towns, which they occupied. When we had invested the camp and bridge of Beaugency, the English army arrived at the camp of Meung-sur-Loire, which was still under their control. But this army could not come to the help of the English besieged in the camp of Beaugency. At the news of the taking of this camp, all the English divisions joined together into one complete army; and we thought they would offer us battle: we made our dispositions accordingly. In presence of the Constable, myself, and the other captains, the Duke d’Alençon asked Jeanne what was to be done. She answered thus, in a loud voice: “Have all of you good spurs?” “What do you mean?” asked those present of her; “are we, then, to turn our backs?” “Nay,” she replied, “it is the English who will not defend themselves, and will be beaten; and you must have good spurs to pursue them.” And it fell out thus, as she had predicted: the English took to flight, and of killed and prisoners there were more than 4,000. At Loches, after the raising of the siege of Orleans, I remember that, one day, the King, being in his private room with the Sieur Christopher d’Harcourt, the Bishop of Castres,[148] his Confessor, and the Sieur de Trèves, who was formerly Chancellor of France,[149] Jeanne and I went to seek him. Before entering, she knocked at the door; as soon as she had entered, she knelt before the King, and, embracing his knees, said these words: “Noble Dauphin! hold no longer these many and long councils, but come quickly to Rheims to take the crown for which you are worthy!” “Is it your Counsel who told you this?” said Christopher d’Harcourt. “Yes,” she answered, “and my Counsel urges me to this most of all.” “Will you not say, here, in presence of the King,” added the Bishop, “what manner of Counsel it is which thus speaks to you?” “I think I understand,” she said, colouring, “what you want to know; and I will tell you willingly.” Then said the King: “Jeanne, will it please you to say, in presence of the persons who are listening to us, what has been asked you?” “Yes, Sire,” she answered. And then she said this, or something approaching it: “When I am vexed that faith is not readily placed in what I wish to say in God’s Name, I retire alone, and pray to God. I complain to Him that those whom I address do not believe me more readily; and, my prayer ended, I hear a Voice which says to me: ‘Daughter of God! go on! go on! go on! I will be thy Help: go on!’ And when I hear this Voice, I have great joy. I would I could always hear it thus.” And, in repeating to us this language of her Voice, she was—strange to say!—in a marvellous rapture, raising her eyes to Heaven.