The raid, however, ceased to terrify the determined votaries of eccentricity in dress, and, as Monstrelet, the historian, pithily puts it, “Snails, when anybody passes near them, draw in their horns; but when the danger is past they put them forth again.” The _hennin_, so called by Friar Correcte, became still more gigantic and grotesque, although Queen Marie, backed by her good mother, Queen Yolande, made loud protests and refused their favours to transgressors. With respect to indecency in dress, the preacher insisted upon running a thick cord between the men and women of his audiences. The mixing of the sexes in public he gravely denounced, and the bareness of women’s breasts and the tightness of men’s hose excited his most eloquent tirades. The reason of the cord he quaintly phrased: “I perceive that sly doings will be going on!” The King of Sicily, Louis III., and Duke René, were quite in accord with the friar’s philippics; but the “King of Bourges” was another sort of man, and much of the coolness which existed between himself and Queen Marie was due to her moderation in dress and quietness of manner. Charles, it was said, chanced to hear the friar one day at Ponthieu, where he was in residence, and ordered him to keep silence and depart. The friar retired to his monastery after a year of eloquence and exertions, but his animadversions upon the lives of the higher clergy led to his being summoned to Rome, to answer to certain charges of breach of monkish discipline and errors of doctrine. The poor man seems to have felt his position keenly, so keenly, indeed, that to escape judgment he jumped out of the window of his cell and decamped. Being quickly captured, he was arraigned before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and condemned to be burnt as a heretic. Perhaps he deserved punishment for his unguarded language, but he paid dearly indeed as a reformer of gay women’s fashions and gross parsons’ passions! The years 1427 and 1428 saw France plunged in warfare. King Charles shook himself, metaphorically, and registered a vow that he would drive out every “desecrating English dog.” He bestirred himself, and led forlorn hopes here and there, only to meet with disaster; and then he gave way to despair, and declared that he would do no more for France or for himself. Queen Marie, with true Anjou-Aragon grit, chided him with his faint-heartedness, and one day she surprised him greatly by appearing in a full suit of armour and armed, and declared that “If you, Charles of France, will not lead your troops, I will!” Her example was contagious, for within a week scores of loyal, devoted women assumed mail and stood for the weal or woe of France. These heroic doings were noised abroad, and possibly they had effect in a very unexpected quarter, for in 1429 another heroine appeared in armour from the eastern frontier of France, and made good woman’s claim to military prowess. Thus quaintly wrote Monstrelet of her: