When Jeannette returned to Sybille the latter was struck by the intrepid mien of the child. The ribbons on her head having become untied, her hair was left free to tumble down upon her shoulders in long black tresses. Still out of breath from running, she leaned for a moment against the moss-grown rocks near the fountain with her arms hanging down upon her scarlet skirt, when, noticing the lamb that lay bleeding on the ground, still palpitating with fear, the little shepherdess fell to crying. Her anger gave place to intense pity. She dipped up some water at the spring in the hollow of her hands, knelt down beside the lamb, washed its wounds and said in a low voice: "Our gentle Dauphin is innocent as you, poor lambkin; and those wicked English dogs seek to tear him up." In the distance the bells of the church of Domremy began their measured chimes. At the sound, of which she was so passionately fond, the little shepherdess cried delightedly: "Oh, god-mother, the bells, the bells!" And in a sort of ecstasy, with her lamb pressed to her breast, Jeannette listened to the sonorous vibrations that the morning breeze wafted to the forest of oaks. CHAPTER VII. GERMINATION. Several weeks went by. The prophecy of Merlin, the remembrance of the King's misfortunes and of the disasters of France, ravaged by the English, obstinately crowded upon Jeannette's mind, before whom her parents frequently conversed upon the sad plight of the country. Thus, often during the hours she spent in solitary musings with her flock in the fields or the woods, she repeated in a low voice the passage from the prophecy of the Gallic bard: "Gaul, lost by a woman, shall be saved by a virgin From the borders of Lorraine and a forest of old oaks." Or that other: "Oh, how much blood! It spouts up, it flows in torrents! It steams and, like a mist, it rises heavenward Where the thunder peals, where the lightning flashes! Athwart those peals of thunder, those flashes of lightning, I see a martial virgin. White is her steed, white is her armor; She battles, she battles still in the midst of a forest of lances, And seems to be riding on the backs of the archers." Whereupon the angel of dazzling light would place the royal crown in the hands of the martial virgin, who crowned her King in the midst of shouts of joy and chants of victory!