Traveling in that wandering fashion, it was noon before we got down to Beauvais, where we stopped for luncheon supplies and to see what is perhaps the most remarkable cathedral in the world. It is one of the most beautiful, and, though it consists only of choir and transepts, it is one of the largest. Its inner height, from floor to vaulting, is 158 feet. The average ten-story skyscraper could be set inside of it. There was once a steeple that towered to the giddy height of five hundred feet, but in 1573, when it had been standing three hundred years, it fell down from having insufficient support. The inner work is of white stone,--marble,--and the whole place seems filled with light. Beauvais has many interesting things, but the day had become very warm, and we did not linger. We found some of the most satisfactory pastries I have ever seen in France, fresh, and dripping with richness; also a few other delicacies, and by and by, under a cool apple-tree on the road to Compiègne, the Joy and I spread out our feast and ate it and listened to some little French birds singing, "_Vite! Vite! Vite!_" meaning that we must be "Quick! Quick! Quick!" so they could have the crumbs. It was at Compiègne that Joan of Arc was captured by her enemies, just a year before that last fearful day at Rouen. She had relieved Orleans, she had fought Patay, she had crowned the king at Rheims; she would have had her army safely in Paris if she had not been withheld by a weak king, influenced by his shuffling, time-serving counselors. She had delivered Compiègne the year before, but now again it was in trouble, besieged by the Duke of Burgundy. "I will go to my good friends of Compiègne," she said, when the news came; and taking such force as she could muster, in number about six hundred cavalry, she went to their relief. From a green hill commanding the valley of the Oise the Joy and I looked down upon the bright river and pretty city which Joan had seen on that long ago afternoon of her last battle for France. Somewhere on that plain the battle had taken place, and Joan's little force for the first time had failed. There had been a panic; Joan, still fighting and trying to rally her men, had been surrounded, dragged from her horse, and made a prisoner. She had led her last charge. We crossed a bridge and entered the city, and stopped in the big public square facing Laroux's beautiful statue of Joan which the later "friends of Compiègne" have raised to her memory. It is Joan in semi-armor, holding aloft her banner; and on the base in old French is inscribed, "_Je yray voir mes bons amys de Compiègne_"--"I will go to see my good friends of Compiègne."