In that gathering of the nobles and chief priests of France what one was there who considered the ceremony with such unselfish purity of heart as this peasant girl of Lorraine! To some it was merely an idle spectacle, a court function like another; to some it was a political event full of promise, from which they themselves might hope for advantages more or less selfish; to Jeanne d'Arc it was the sacred fulfilment of that which God had promised her. Her task was completed now; how gladly would she have left the scene, without a thought of worldly advancement, content to have been Jeanne la Pucelle, through whom France was to be saved, content to be once more merely Jeanne the shepherdess. When the crown was placed on the dauphin's head Jeanne knelt before him, and wept as she embraced his knees. "O gentle king," she said, "now is fulfilled the will of God, who was pleased that I should raise the siege of Orléans and should bring you to your city of Rheims to be crowned and anointed, in proof that you are true king and rightful possessor of the realm of France." She herself felt that her mission was accomplished, and besought the king to allow her to return to her home, "to my father and mother, to keep their sheep for them, as was my wont." But Jeanne was too useful to be allowed to retire, and though she no longer heard the call of her divine monitors Charles insisted on her remaining to help him to win back his kingdom; but "all that was to be done she had now accomplished; what remained was--to suffer." As she rode through the streets of Rheims she exclaimed: "O why can I not die here!" "And where, then, will you die?" asked the archbishop. "I know not; it will be where God pleases. I have done what my Lord commanded me to do. Now I would that it might please Him to send me back to keep my sheep with my sister and my mother." Her courage was as high as ever, the brave heart faltered not, but it was no longer inspired. "She began to hear those voices, no longer from heaven, but from the hearth, those voices that vainly call disheartened man, sick of ambition and glory, to the home of his earliest affections, to the humble occupations of his childhood, to the obscurity of his early days." Hearken to those voices, Jeanne, and strive no longer to awaken faint echoes of thy heavenly voices: "The oracles are dumb,... No nightly trance or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell."