willingly giving herself over to dreams and visions is more possible to the old than to the young.  Her confidence and hope for her good friends of Compiegne gave way before the continued tale of their sufferings, and the inveterate siege which was driving them to desperation.  No doubt the worst news was told to Jeanne, and twice over she made a desperate attempt to escape, in hope of being able to succour them, but without any sanction, as she confesses, from her spiritual instructors.  At Beaulieu the attempt was simple enough:  the narrative seems to imply that the doorway, or some part of the wall of her room, had been closed with laths or planks nailed across an opening:  and between these she succeeded in slipping, “as she was very slight,” with the hope of locking the door to an adjoining guard-room upon the men who had charge of her, and thus getting free.  But alas!  The porter of the chateau, who had no business there, suddenly appeared in the corridor, and she was discovered and taken back to her chamber.  At Beaurevoir, which was farther off, her attempt was a much more desperate one, and indicates a despair and irritation of mind which had become unbearable.  At this place her own condition was much alleviated; the castle was the residence of Jean de Luxembourg’s wife and aunt, ladies who visited Jeanne continually, and soon became interested and attached to her; but as the master of the house was himself in the camp before Compiegne, they had the advantage or disadvantage, as far as the prisoner was concerned, of constant news, and Jeanne’s trouble for her friends grew daily.

She seems, indeed, after the assurance she had expressed at first, to have fallen into great doubt and even carried on within herself a despairing argument with her spiritual guides on this point, battling with these saintly influences as in the depths of the troubled heart many have done with the Creator Himself in similar circumstances.  “How,” she cried, “could God let them perish who had been so good and loyal to their King?” St. Catherine replied gently that He would Himself care for these bons amis, and even promised that “before the St. Martin” relief would come.  But Jeanne had probably by this time—­in her great disappointment and loneliness, and with the sense in her of so much power to help were she only free—­got beyond her own control.  They bade her to be patient.  One of them, amid their exhortations to accept her fate cheerfully, and not to be astonished at it, seems to have conveyed to her mind the impression that she should not be delivered till she had seen the King of England.  “Truly I will not see him!  I would rather die than fall into the hands of the English,” cried Jeanne in her petulance.  The King of England is spoken of always, it is curious to note, as if he had been a great, severe ruler like his father, never as the child he really was.  But Jeanne in her helplessness and impotence was impatient even with her saints.  Day by day the news came