At the gates of St. Denis we asked where the quarters of the Scots men-at-arms might be, and were told in the chapel, whither we needed no guide.  But, as we went up the street, we saw women leaning forth from the windows, laughing with the men-at-arms, and beckoning to them, and by the tavern doors many were sitting drinking, with girls beside them, and others were playing dice, and many an oath we heard, and foul words, as is customary in a camp.  Verily I saw well that this was not the army of men clean confessed and of holy life who had followed the Maid from Blois to Orleans.  In place of priests, here were harlots, and, for hymns, ribald songs, for men had flocked in from every quarter; soldiers of the robber companies, Bretons, Germans, Italians, Spaniards, all talking in their own speech, rude, foul, and disorderly.  So we took our way, as best we knight, through the press, hearing oaths enough if our horses trod over near any man, and seeing daggers drawn.

It was a pleasure to come out on the great parvise, where the red, white, and green of our Scots were the commonest colours, and where the air was less foul and noisome than in the narrow wynds.  High above us the great towers of the abbey shone red and golden in the light of the sinking sun, while beneath all was brown, dusk, and dim with smoke.  On these towers I could gladly have looked long, and not wearied.  For they are all carven with the holy company of the martyrs and saints, like the Angels whom Jacob saw ascending by the ladder into heaven; even so that blessed company seemed to scale upwards from the filth of the street, and the darkness, and the din, right on towards the golden heights of the City of God.  And beneath them lie the sacred bones of all the kings of France, from the days of St. Dagobert even to our own time, all laid there to rest where no man shall disturb them, till the Angels’ Trumpet calls, and the Day of Judgment is at hand.  Verily it is a solemn place for a Christian man to think on, and I was gazing thereupon, as in a dream, when one plucked my sleeve, and turning, I saw Randal Rutherford, all his teeth showing in a grin.

“Welcome,” he cried.  “You have made good speed, and the beginning of a fray is better than the end of a feast.  And, by St. Boswell, to-morrow we shall have it, lad!  The King came in to-day—­late is better than never—­and to-morrow we go with the Maid, to give these pock-puddings a taste of Scottish steel.”

“And the Maid, where is she, Randal?”

“She lodges beyond the Paris gate, at the windmill, wherefrom she drove the English some days agone.”

“Wherefore not in the town?” I asked.

“Mayhap because she likes to be near her work, and would that all were of her mind.  And mayhap she loves not the sight of the wenches whom she was wont to drive from the camp, above all now that she has broken the Holy Sword of Fierbois, smiting a lass with the flat of the blade.”