There was one point it was necessary to ascertain; they must know whether Jeanne was, as she said, a virgin. Matrons had indeed already examined her on her arrival at Chinon. Then there was a doubt as to whether she were man or maid; and it was even feared that she might be an illusion in woman's semblance, produced by the art of demons, which scholars considered by no means impossible.[773] It was not long since the death of that canon who held that now and again knights are changed into bears and spirits travel a hundred leagues in one night, then suddenly become sows or wisps of straw.[774] Suitable measures had therefore been taken. But they must be carried out exactly, wisely, and cautiously, for the matter was of great importance. [Footnote 773: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 95; vol. iii, p. 209.] [Footnote 774: Mary Darmesteter, _Froissart_, Paris, 1894, in 12mo, p. 96.] CHAPTER VIII THE MAID AT POITIERS (_continued_) A belief, common to learned and ignorant alike, ascribed special virtues to the state of virginity. Such ideas had been handed down from a remote antiquity; their origin was pre-Christian; they were an immemorial inheritance, one part of which came from the Gauls and Germans, the other from the Romans and Greeks. In the land of Gaul there still lingered a memory of the sacred beauty of the white priestesses of the forest; and sometimes in the Island of Sein, along the misty shores of the Ocean, there wandered the shades of those nine sisters at whose bidding, in days of yore, the tempest raged and was stilled.