"Did you not send for me?" asked the Maid. Assured of this, she turned meekly back, when there passed before her eyes a shining cloud, and from the cloud came a voice bidding her "change her course of life, and do marvelous deeds, for the King of Heaven had chosen her to aid the King of France. She must wear man's dress, take up arms, be a captain in the war, and all would be ordered by her advice." Some historians accept, others reject this story: "I tell the tale that I heard told." For several years--some say three, some five--the Maid kept these things in her heart. But now the Voices (she always called them so) became more explicit. She must "go into France." (Here arise questions concerning the borders of Bar and Lorraine, which concern us little to-day, albeit volumes have been written about them. Domrémy was actually in France, but not in that part of it held by the Orleanists; Burgundy lay between, and several broad provinces held by the English: yet the people of Domrémy were French, every fibre of them, and not a heart in the village but was with Charles of Valois in his struggle to regain his father's crown.) She must go to France, said the Voices, because of the "great pity" that was there. She must save France, must save the king. Over and over again, this was repeated, till the words might have been found written on her heart, as "Calais" on Mary Tudor's. It was the autumn of 1428, and "Orleans" was the word on all lips and in all hearts of Frenchmen. The English were encamped around the city, had invested it; the siege had begun. If Orleans fell, France fell with her. Clearer and clearer came the Voices. Not only France, but Orleans, Joan was bidden to save. This done, she must seek the Dauphin Charles, must lead him to Rheims and there see him crowned king. What she must do thereafter was not clear; the Voices rang confusedly. Something there was about driving the English from France. But now, now, _now_, she must be about the work in hand. She must go to Robert of Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs, and ask him for an escort to the Dauphin. "I am a poor girl!" cried the Maid. "I have never sat a horse; how should I lead an army?" Clearer and stronger day by day the Voices reiterated their command. She must go, go, go to Vaucouleurs. At last Joan could resist no longer. "The time went heavily with me, as with a woman in travail." She resolved to go "into France," though, she said, unless at God's bidding, she would rather be torn by wild horses than leave Domrémy. About this time Jacques d'Arc had a dream, wherein he saw his daughter riding in company with armed men. He was both frightened and angry. "If I knew of your sister's going," he said to his sons, Peter and John, "I would bid you drown her; if you refused, I would drown her myself."