One day she said to one of the Council, Pierre de Versailles, ’I believe you have come to put questions to me, and although I know not A or B, what I do know is that I am sent by the King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orleans, and to conduct the King to Rheims, in order that he shall be there anointed and crowned.’

On another occasion she addressed the following words in a letter which John Erault took down from her dictation—­to write she knew not—­to the English commanders before Orleans:  ’In the name of the King of Heaven I command you, Suffolk [spelt in the missive Suffort], Scales [Classidas], and Pole [La Poule], to return to England.’

One sees by the above missive that the French spelling of English names was about as correct in the fifteenth as it is in the nineteenth century.

What stirred the curiosity of Joan’s examiners was to try and discover whether her reported visions and her voices were from Heaven or not.  This was the crucial question over which these churchmen and lawyers puzzled their brains during those three weeks of the blithe spring-tide at Poitiers.  How were they to arrive at a certain knowledge regarding those mystic portents?  All the armoury of theological knowledge accumulated by the doctors of the Church was made use of; but this availed less than the simple answers of Joan in bringing conviction to these puzzled pundits that her call was a heavenly one.  When they produced piles of theological books and parchments, Joan simply said:  ’God’s books are to me more than all these.’

When at length it was officially notified that the Parliament approved and sanctioned the mission of the Maid, and that nothing against her had appeared which could in any way detract from the faith she professed to follow out her mission of deliverance, the rejoicing in the good town of Poitiers was extreme.  The glad news spread rapidly over the country, and fluttered the hearts of the besieged within the walls of Orleans.  The cry was, ‘When will the angelic one arrive?’ The brave Dunois—­Bastard of Orleans—­in command of the French in that city, had ere this sent two knights, Villars and Jamet de Tilloy, to hear all details about the Maid, whose advent was so eagerly looked forward to.  These messengers of Dunois had seen and spoken with Joan, and on their return to Orleans Dunois allowed them to tell the citizens their impressions of the Maid.  Those people at Orleans were now as enthusiastic about the deliverance as the inhabitants at Poitiers, who had seen her daily for three weeks in their midst.  All who had been admitted to her presence left her with tears of joy and devotion; her simple and modest behaviour, blended with her splendid enthusiasm, won every heart.  Her manner and modesty, and the gay brightness of her answers, had also won the suffrage of the priests and lawyers, and the military were as much delighted as surprised at her good sense when the talk fell on subjects relating to their trade.