Her only way now, as Burgundy had foreseen, was by the bridge of Soissons over the Aisne, thirty miles and more away. To Soissons, then, in God's name! She set out without delay, the Archbishop riding with her, and all her troop; reached Soissons--to find the gates shut. The traitor who held the city for France, a Picard, by name Bournel, was even then making his arrangements with Burgundy. He refused to open the gates to his master's troops, and shortly after sold his city for four thousand _salus d'or_. The bill of sale is extant, and should be curious reading. On meeting this check, the French army broke up into different parties. Joan determined to return to Compiègne; was already on her way thither when she heard that Burgundy and the Earl of Arundel were encamped before it. Her company was only two hundred men, commanded by one Baretta, a soldier of no wide renown. Alas! where was Dunois? Where La Hire, Xaintrailles? Where her friend and brother-in-arms, the gentle duke of Alençon? All gone! Some of them before Paris, keeping the Bourgeois and his like in daily terror of their lives; some, it may be, with their precious king, who about this time made the discovery (and told the people of Rheims, as an astounding piece of news!) that Burgundy did not really mean to make peace, and was definitely on the side of their enemies. At midnight of May 22nd, the Maid left Crépy with her band, and rode rapidly through the forest. The soldiers themselves seem to have been disheartened at the prospect before them. "We are but a handful!" they told her. "How can we pass through the armies of England and Burgundy?" "_Par mon martin!_" cried Joan; "we are enough. I am going to see my good friends at Compiègne." That was a wild ride through the midnight forest. Fancy, always at her tricks, tempts me to make it even wilder; to tamper with the Shuttle, and set the Loom astray. How if the centuries should in some way juggle themselves together, and the Nineteenth come sweeping along with hound and horn before the eyes of the Maid? What would she make, I wonder, of those two lovely ladies, her of the shoulders and her of the silken tresses? What in return would they make of the slim rider in battered armor, urging her horse to the gallop? They would probably give orders to have her arrested for disturbing the royal sport. But how if, instead of these, it might have been given her, as part of her reward from Heaven, to come upon that other band, in armor not wholly unlike her own (seeing that our To-day must needs snatch from Yesterday anything and everything that may still avail to help); that band in brown and blue, who hold the line against the onrushing waves of the Gray Tide? How then? She scans the Line; her keen eyes lighten, then grow bewildered. France? Yes; but--England beside her? Friends then? Allies? _À la bonne heure!_ The word?