D'Aulon, her faithful squire, had been wounded, and stood at a little distance, leaning on his crutches and looking on. Seeing, as he thought, all lost for the time being, he managed to get on his horse, and riding up to the Maid, asked why she stood there in peril of her life, instead of retreating with the others. Raising the visor of her helmet, Joan looked him full in the face. "I am not alone!" she said quietly. "With me are fifty thousand of my own, and I will not leave this spot till the town is taken." A strange answer; d'Aulon was a literal-minded youth. He looked about him, bewildered. "Whatever she might say," he says in telling the story, "she had only four or five men with her, I know it for certain, and so do several others who looked on; so I urged her to go back with the rest. Then she bade me tell them to bring fagots and fascines to bridge the moat, and she herself in a clear voice gave the same order." Was it the sight of her? When they failed at Paris, was it because the white-clad figure lay unseen in the fosse, though the brave piteous voice still rang like a trumpet through that twilight of despair? D'Aulon thought it a miracle, as would most people of his time. All in a moment, it seemed, the thing was done; the moat bridged, the troops over it, the town stormed and taken "with no great resistance." Yet once more, Joan, before your year is over, before your bright day darkens into night! St. John's Day is near. At La Charité there were no shining deeds; no victory of any sort. For a month the French army lay before the place, and once an assault was attempted; but the weather was bad, the men weary, hungry, dispirited; briefly, it was November instead of October. Charles, though he had given Joan money for the poor of Bourges, had none for feeding and clothing his army. The town must have yielded soon, men thought, since no one came to succor it; but the French could neither besiege nor assault on empty stomachs, and the siege was abandoned. Charles, as a sugarplum to console the heartsick Maid, conferred a patent of nobility on her and all her family; "that the memory of the divine glory and of so many favors may endure and increase forever."