Charles VII--the "gentle Dauphin" of France and object of the fervent adoration of Joan, who now for several days lay sequestered in the tower of Coudray--soon tired of the interview to which he had summoned his minister, and sought recreation elsewhere. He found it in the company of his mistress, Aloyse of Castelnau. Indolently stretched upon a cushion at her feet he chatted with her. Frail and slight of stature, the prince, although barely twenty-three years of age, was pale, worn-out and unnerved by excesses. Aloyse, on the other hand, in the full splendor of her beauty, soon found occasion to answer a joke of her royal lover on the subject of Joan the Maid. She said smiling: "Fie, Charles! Fie, you libertine! To hold such language about an inspired virgin who wishes to restore to you the crown of France!" "If it is to be that way, the ways of the Lord are strange and inscrutable, as our tonsured friends say. To have the crown and kingdom of France turn upon the maidenhood, upon the virginity of a cowherd!" "Are you still at it?" responded Aloyse, interrupting Charles. "I guess your villainous thoughts regarding the poor girl." "I ask myself, how could the idea have germinated in the mind of that poor girl of restoring my crown to me!" "You display very little concern about your kingdom!" "On the contrary--I think a good deal of my crown. It is the cares of royalty that cause me to speak in that way, my beautiful mistress." "If the English take Orleans, the key of Touraine and Poitou, and they then invade those provinces, what will then be left to you?" "You, my charmer! And if I must make the confession, it has often occurred to me that my great-grandfather, King John II, of pious memory, must have recorded among the happy days of his life the one on which he lost the battle of Poitiers--" "The day when your great-grandfather, taken prisoner by the English, was transported to their own country? You must be crazy, my dear Charles!"