The communications of the spirits became more and more pressing in the measure that Joan approached her seventeenth year. The great designs, that she felt driven to be the instrument of, took an ever stronger hold upon her. Unremitting and painful the obsession pursued her everywhere. "I felt," said she later, "I felt in my spirit that which a woman must feel when about to be brought to bed of a child."[22] St. Marguerite and St. Catherine appeared before the young girl, encouraged her, reassured her, promised her the help of God in the deeds that she was to achieve; when the vision vanished the poor child would break out in tears, regretting, as she later expressed it, that her good saints did not take her with them to the angels in the paradise of the good God.[23] Despite these alternations between faith and doubt concerning her mission, Joan gradually familiarized herself with the thought at which her modesty and simplicity had at first recoiled, the thought of commanding armed men and of vanquishing the English at their head. In that wonderful organism a rare sagacity, an excellent judgment, an astonishing military aptitude were, without losing any of these qualities, without losing aught of virtue, blended with the exaltations of an inspired woman. Often, recalling as she constantly did, the infantine battle in which victory remained with her, Joan would say: "Men and children, when known how to be handled, can not choose but obey the identical impulses, the identical generous sentiments; with the aid of heaven it will be with the men of the royal army as it was with the urchins of Domremy; they will follow my example." Or again: "To raise the courage of a discouraged and disheartened army, to exalt it, to lead it straight upon the enemy, whatever the number of these may be, to attack it daringly in the open field or behind its entrenchment, and to vanquish it, that is no impossible undertaking. If it succeeds, the consequences of a first victory, by rekindling the fire of an army demoralized by the habit of defeat, are incalculable." Thoughts like these revealed in Joan a profound intuition in matters of war. Joan, moreover, was not of those puling visionaries, who expect from God alone the triumph of a good cause. One of her favorite sayings was: "Help yourself, and heaven will help you."[24] She ever put in practice that adage of rustic common sense. When on a later occasion a captain said to her disdainfully: "If God wished to drive the English out of Gaul, He could do so by the sole power of His will; He would need neither you, Joan, nor any men-at-arms," Joan answered: "_The men-at-arms will battle--God will give the victory._" CHAPTER XIII. WRESTLING WITH THE ANGELS.