Sixty-six years later, an inhabitant of Poitiers, almost a hundred years old, told a young fellow-citizen that he had seen the Maid set out for Orleans on horseback, in white armour.[797] He pointed to the very stone from which she had mounted her horse in the corner of the Rue Saint-Etienne. Now, when Jeanne was at Poitiers, she was not in armour. But the people of Poitou had named the stone "the Maid's mounting stone." With what a glad eager step the Saint must have leapt from that stone on to the horse which was to carry her away from those furred cats to the afflicted and oppressed whom she was longing to succour.[798] [Footnote 797: Jean Bouchet, _Annales d'Aquitaine_, in the _Trial_, vol. iv, pp. 536, 537.] [Footnote 798: Guilbert, _Histoire des villes de France_, vol. iv, Poitiers. Cf. B. Ledain, _La Maison de Jeanne d'Arc a Poitiers_, Saint-Maixent, 1892, in 8vo. According to M. Ledain the Hotel de la Rose was on the spot now occupied by a house, number 13 in La Rue Notre-Dame-la-Petite.] CHAPTER IX THE MAID AT TOURS At Tours the Maid lodged in the house of a dame commonly called Lapau.[799] She was Eleonore de Paul, a woman of Anjou, who had been lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie of Anjou. Married to Jean du Puy, Lord of La Roche-Saint-Quentin, Councillor of the Queen of Sicily, she had remained in the service of the Queen of France.[800] [Footnote 799: _Trial_, vol. iii, p. 66.] [Footnote 800: Vallet de Viriville, _Notices et extraits de chartes et de manuscrits appartenant au British Museum de Londres_, in the _Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, vol. viii, pp. 139, 140.]