But there are other reasons. Most of the witnesses appear excessively simple and lacking in discernment. In so large a number of men of all ages and of all ranks it is sad to find how few were equipped with lucid and judicial minds. It would seem as if the human intellect of those days was enwrapped in twilight and incapable of seeing anything distinctly. Thought as well as speech was curiously puerile. Only a slight acquaintance with this dark age is enough to make one feel as if among children. Want and ignorance and wars interminable had impoverished the mind of man and starved his moral nature. The scanty, slashed, ridiculous garments of the nobles and the wealthy betray an absurd poverty of taste and weakness of intellect.[49] One of the most striking characteristics of these small minds is their triviality; they are incapable of attention; they retain nothing. No one who reads the writings of the period can fail to be struck by this almost universal weakness. [Footnote 49: J. Quicherat, _Histoire du costume_, Paris, 1875, large 8vo, _passim_. G. Demay, _Le costume au moyen age d'apres les sceaux_, Paris, 1880, p. 121, figs. 76 and 77.] By no means all the evidence given in these one hundred and forty depositions can be treated seriously. The daughter of Jacques Boucher, steward to the Duke of Orleans, depones in the following terms: "At night I slept alone with Jeanne. Neither in her words or her acts did I ever observe anything wrong. She was perfectly simple, humble, and chaste."[50] [Footnote 50: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 34.] This young lady was nine years old when she perceived with a discernment somewhat precocious that her sleeping companion was simple, humble, and chaste. That is unimportant. But to show how one may sometimes be deceived by the witnesses whom one would expect to be the most reliable, I will quote Brother Pasquerel.[51] Brother Pasquerel is Jeanne's chaplain. He may be expected to speak as one who has seen and as one who knows. Brother Pasquerel places the examination at Poitiers before the audience granted by the King to the Maid in the chateau of Chinon.[52] [Footnote 51: _Ibid._, p. 100.] [Footnote 52: We must notice, however, that Brother Pasquerel, who was not present either at Chinon or at Poitiers, is careful to say that he knows nothing of Jeanne's sojourn in these two towns save what she herself has told him. Now we are surprised to find that she herself placed the examination at Poitiers before the audience at Chinon, since she says in her trial that at Chinon, when she gave her King a sign, the clerks ceased to contend with her.--_Trial_, vol. i, p. 145.]