She encountered not only resistance but temptation in her own family. They tried to marry her, in the hope of bringing her back to a more rational way of thinking. A young man of the village alleged that she had promised him marriage when she was still a child; and as she denied the fact, he cited her before the ecclesiastical judge at Toul. It was supposed she would make no defence, but would submit to be cast by the court and married; but to everyone’s great astonishment, she went to Toul, appeared in court, and spoke--she who had always held her peace. To enable her to escape from the control of her family, it was necessary she should find in her family itself someone to believe her; this was a most difficult problem. Failing to persuade her father, she made a convert of her uncle, who took her away with him, under the pretext of her nursing his wife in her lying-in. She prevailed on him to go to the sire de Baudricourt, captain of Vaucouleurs, and ask his support for her; but the man of war gave the peasant a very bad reception, and told him the only thing to be done was “to slap her well,” and take her home to her father. She was not cast down by the rebuff, but determined to depart, and her uncle was constrained to accompany her. The decisive moment was come; she quitted her family and her native village forever; she embraced her friends, especially her dear little friend Mengette, whom she commended to God’s keeping; but as for Haumette, the friend she loved above all others, she preferred to depart without seeing her. She arrived then in the town of Vaucouleurs, dressed in her clumsy red peasant garments, and went along with her uncle to lodge with the wife of a wheelwright who took a liking to her. She had herself taken into Baudricourt’s presence, and said to him boldly that “she came to him on the part of our Lord to bid him tell the dauphin to keep his ground steadily, and not give battle to his enemies; for our Lord would grant him succour in mid-Lent. The kingdom did not belong to the dauphin but to our Lord; nevertheless, it was our Lord’s will that the dauphin should become king, and that he should hold the kingdom in trust.” She went on to say that, in spite of the dauphin’s enemies, he would be king, and she would take him to be crowned. The captain was amazed, and suspecting there was some deviltry at work, he consulted the parish priest, who apparently entertained the same doubts. Joan had not spoken of her visions to any churchman. The priest, therefore, accompanied the captain to the wheelwright’s house with his stole on, and adjured Joan to depart if she was sent by the evil spirit.