So that though she led us to the very walls of Paris, and would have taken the whole city without a doubt, had she been permitted, though the Duc d’Alencon, now her devoted adherent, went down upon his very knees to beg of the King to fear nothing, but trust all to her genius, her judgment; he could not prevail, and orders were sent forth to break down the bridge that she had built for the storming party to pass over, and that the army should fall back with their task undone!

Oh, the folly, the ingratitude, the baseness of it all!  How well do I remember the face of the Maid, as she said: 

“The King’s word must be obeyed; but truly it will take him seven years—­ah, and twenty years now—­to accomplish that which I would do for him in less than twenty days!”

Think of it—­you who have seen what followed.  Was Paris in the King’s hands in less than seven years?  Were the English driven from France in less than twenty?

She was wounded, too; and had been forcibly carried away from the field of battle; but it was against her own will.  She would have fought through thick and thin, had the King’s commands not prevailed; and even then she begged to be left with a band of soldiers at St. Denis.

“My voices tell me to remain here,” she said; but alas! her voices were regarded no longer by the King, whose foolish head and cowardly heart were under other influences than that of the Maid, to whom he had promised so much such a short while since.

And so his word prevailed, and we were perforce obliged to retreat from those walls we had so confidently desired to storm.  And there in the church of St. Denis, where she had knelt so many hours in prayer and supplication, the Maid left her beautiful silver armour, which had so often flashed its radiant message of triumph to her soldiers, and with it that broken sword—­broken outside the walls of Paris, and which no skill had sufficed to mend—­which had been taken from St Catherine’s Church in Fierbois.

It was not altogether an unwonted act for knights to deposit their arms in churches, though the custom is dying away, with so many other relics of chivalry; but there was something very strange and solemn in this act of the Maid.  It was to us a significant sign of that which she saw before her.  We dared not ask her wherefore she did it.  Something in her sad, gentle face forbade us.  But I felt the tears rising to my eyes as I watched her kneel long in prayer when the deed was done, and I heard stifled sobs arising from that end of the building where some women and children knelt.  For the Maid was ever the friend of all such, and never a woman or child whom she approached, whether she were clad in peasant’s homespun or in shining coat of mail, but gave her love and trust and friendship at sight.

Henceforth the Maid went clothed in a light suit of mail, such as any youthful knight might wear.  She never spoke again of her fair white armour, or of the sword which had shivered in her hand, none save herself knew how or when.