When Jeanne was about thirteen, at noon one summer’s day, she was in her father’s garden, when she suddenly saw a strange light and heard a voice speaking to her. She was filled with fear and wondered what this could mean. But she believed that it was the voice of God that she heard, and after hearing it thrice, she knew it to be the voice of an angel. Twice or thrice a week she used to hear the voice. It told her to be good and to go often to church, and it also told her that she must go into France. Sometimes there were several voices, and she thought they were the voices of the Archangel Michael and of the Saints Margaret and Catherine. Sometimes she saw their visible shapes, Michael in armour, the Saints crowned with fair crowns. Their voices were beautiful, gentle, and sweet, and a delicate fragrance accompanied them. We cannot explain these visions. Jeanne herself believed that she saw and heard the Saints, and that they guided her in all she had to do. After she had seen them, she grew still more devout in her prayers, but though again and again the voices told her to go into France, she waited from three to four years wondering what this could mean, and speaking to no one of the voices. In 1428, they told her to go to the governor of the neighbouring town, Vaucouleurs, and ask him for an armed escort into France, that she might save the town of Orleans, which was besieged by the English. She answered, “I am a poor girl, who cannot ride or be a leader in war.” But at last the day came when she felt that she could not resist the voices any more. She did not tell her father and mother, but she asked permission to visit a married cousin who lived near Vaucouleurs. Then she persuaded her cousin’s husband to take her to see the governor. The governor was a blunt, rough soldier, not at all likely to believe in Jeanne’s mission. He could not be expected to think that an ignorant girl of sixteen could save France, and he seems only to have laughed at her. She went home not discouraged but quite clear in her mind that next year she would save the Dauphin, and take him to be crowned at Rheims, the city where the French kings had always been crowned. [Illustration: JEANNE IN CHURCH.]