Another tale is vouched for by eyewitnesses: how as the Maid rode over the bridge toward the city, a certain man-at-arms spoke to her in coarse and insulting language. "Alas!" said Joan; "thou blasphemest thy God, and art so near thy death!" He was drowned shortly after, whether by accident or by his own act, seems uncertain. So the Maid came to Chinon, and after some further delay, was admitted, on the evening of March 29th, to the presence of the Dauphin. Chinon Castle is in ruins to-day. Of the great hall on the first story nothing remains save part of the wall and the great fireplace of carved stone; yet even these are hardly needed to call up the scene that March evening. We can see the fire crackling under the fine chimney-piece, the dozens of torches flinging their fitful glare about the great hall where some three hundred knights were gathered. They were standing in knots here and there, whispering together, waiting, some hopefully, some scornfully, for this importunate visitor, the peasant girl of Domrémy. In one of these knots stood Charles of Valois, far less splendidly dressed than some of his followers. He made no sign when Joan entered the hall, led by the high steward, Louis of Bourbon, Count of Vendôme: but his eyes, all eyes in that hall, were fixed curiously on the slender figure clad in black and gray, which advanced modestly yet boldly. Joan of Arc was now seventeen years old: tall and well made. Guy de Laval wrote of her to his mother: "She seems a thing all divine, _de son faict_, and to see her and hear her." Others call her "beautiful in face and figure," her countenance glad and smiling. "Elle est plaisante en faite et dite, Belle et blanche comme la rose," says the old mystery play of the siege of Orleans. Andrew Lang, the most sympathetic of her English biographers,[31] writes thus of her appearance: "Her hair was black, cut short like a soldier's; as to her eyes and features, having no information, we may conceive of them as we please. Probably she had grey eyes, and a clear pale colour under the tan of sun and wind. She was so tall that she could wear a man's clothes, those, for example, of Durand Lassois." There is no authentic likeness of the Maid; she never sat for her portrait; yet who is there that cannot picture to himself that slender figure, in the black _pourpoint_, with the short gray cloak thrown back over her shoulder, coming forward to meet and greet the Prince to whom she was to give a kingdom, receiving in return a felon's grave? Accounts vary as to the scene that followed. Some chroniclers say that Joan asked that "she should not be deceived, but be shown plainly him to whom she must speak"; others assert that Charles turned aside at her approach, effacing himself, as it were, behind some of his followers. However it was, Joan showed no hesitation, but went directly up to the Prince and made obeisance humbly.