The most illustrious of female knights, however, is, without dispute, the Maid of Orleans. Poor Jeanne Darc seems to me to have been an illustrious dupe and an innocent victim. Like Charlotte Corday, the calamities of her country weighed heavily upon her spirits, and her consequent eager desire to relieve them, caused her to be marked as a fitting instrument for a desired end. Poor Charlotte Corday commissioned herself for the execution of the heroic deed which embellishes her name--Jeanne Darc was evidently commissioned by others. The first step taken by Jeanne to obtain access to the Dauphin, was to solicit the assistance of the proud De Baudricourt, who resided not far from the maid’s native place, Domremy. However pious the young girl may have been, De Baudricourt was not the man to give her a public reception, had not some foregone conclusion accompanied it. She needed his help to enable her to proceed to Chinon. The answer of the great chief was that she should not be permitted to go there. The reply of the maid, who was always uncommonly “smart” in her answers, was that she _would_ go to Chinon, although she were forced to crawl the whole way on her knees. She _did_ go, and the circumstances of a mere young girl, who was in the habit of holding intercourse with angels and archangels, thus overcoming, as it were, the most powerful personage in the district, was proof enough to the common mind, as to whence she derived her strength and authority. The corps of priests by whom she was followed, as soon as her divine mission was acknowledged or invented by the court, lent her additional influence, and sanctified in her own mind, her doubtless honest enthusiasm. The young girl did all to which she pledged herself, and in return, was barbarously treated by both friend and foe, and was most hellishly betrayed by the Church, under whose benediction she had raised her banner. She engaged to relieve Orleans from the terrible English army which held it in close siege, and she nobly kept her engagement. It may be noticed that the first person slain in this siege, was a young lady named Belle, and the fair sex thus furnished the first victim, as well as the great conqueror, in this remarkable conflict. I pass over general details, in order to have the more space to notice particular illustrative circumstances touching our female warrior. Jeanne, it must be allowed, was extremely bold of assertion as well as smart in reply. She would have delighted a Swedenborgian by the alacrity with which she protested that she held intercourse with spirits from Heaven and prophets of old. Nothing was so easy as to make her believe so; and she was quite as ready to deny the alleged fact when her clerical accusers, in the day of her adversity, declared that such belief was a suggestion of the devil. I think there was some humor and a little reproach in the reply by Jeanne, that she would maintain or deny nothing but as she was directed by the Church.