the door with Dame Boucher and her daughter. Neither the equerry nor the page of Joan had been informed of the sally.[72] But not aware of that, the martial maid leaned out of the window and addressed Imerguet in a reproachful tone: "Oh, bad boy! They are attacking the entrenchments without me, and you did not come to tell me that French blood was flowing![73] Madeleine, come quick, I beg you, to help me put on my cuirass! Alack! We are losing time." Madeleine and her mother quickly ascended to Joan's room. She was helped on with her armor, descended to the street and leaped upon the horse of her page. At that moment it occurred to her that she had forgotten her banner near her bed where she always placed it. She said to Imerguet: "Run up quick for my standard! It is in the room. Hand it to me through the window in order to lose less time."[74] The page hastened to obey, while Dame Boucher and her daughter paid their adieus to the Maid. The latter raised herself upon her stirrups, took the standard that Imerguet lowered to her from the window above, and plunging her spurs into the flanks of her horse, the warrior maid waved with her hand a last good-bye to Madeleine, and departed with such swiftness that the sparks flew from the pavement under the iron shoes of her steed.[75] By concealing the hour of the assault from Joan, the Sire of Gaucourt had planned to keep her away and thus to injure her in the opinion of the soldiers, who would impute to cowardice her absence at the hour of danger. Planted at the Bourgogne Gate at the head of the reserves, Gaucourt saw with surprise and anger Joan approaching at a gallop, cased in her white armor and her white standard in her hand. She passed the traitor like an apparition, and soon disappeared from his sight in a cloud of dust raised by the rapid gait of her horse, that she drove with free reins down the Sologne road, while with pangs of despair she heard the detonations of the artillery increase in frequency. In the measure that she drew near the field of battle, the cries of the soldiers, the clash of arms, the formidable noise of battle reached her ear more distinctly. Finally the bastille of St. Loup hove in sight. It intercepted the Sologne road, dominating the Loire river, and was built at the foot of an old church that in itself was a powerful fortification. The church formed a second redoubt within the first, whose parapets were at that moment half concealed by the smoke of the cannons. Their fire redoubled, the last ranks of the French were descending almost perpendicularly into a deep moat, the first defense of the entrenchment, when, leaving her steaming horse, Joan rushed forward, her banner in her hands, to join the combatants who at that moment, instead of proceeding forward down into the moat were turning about and climbing out again crying: "The bastille is impregnable!" "The English are full of the devil!" "The Maid is not with us!" "God has forsaken us!"