The King’s relative, the Duke of Alencon, three years prisoner of war to the English, was in these days released from captivity through promise of a great ransom; and the name and fame of the Maid having reached him—­for the same filled all mouths now, and penetrated to all parts—­he came to Chinon to see with his own eyes what manner of creature she might be.  The King sent for Joan and introduced her to the Duke.  She said, in her simple fashion: 

“You are welcome; the more of the blood of France that is joined to this cause, the better for the cause and it.”

Then the two talked together, and there was just the usual result:  when they departed, the Duke was her friend and advocate.

Joan attended the King’s mass the next day, and afterward dined with the King and the Duke.  The King was learning to prize her company and value her conversation; and that might well be, for, like other kings, he was used to getting nothing out of people’s talk but guarded phrases, colorless and non-committal, or carefully tinted to tally with the color of what he said himself; and so this kind of conversation only vexes and bores, and is wearisome; but Joan’s talk was fresh and free, sincere and honest, and unmarred by timorous self-watching and constraint.  She said the very thing that was in her mind, and said it in a plain, straightforward way.  One can believe that to the King this must have been like fresh cold water from the mountains to parched lips used to the water of the sun-baked puddles of the plain.

After dinner Joan so charmed the Duke with her horsemanship and lance practice in the meadows by the Castle of Chinon whither the King also had come to look on, that he made her a present of a great black war-steed.

Every day the commission of bishops came and questioned Joan about her Voices and her mission, and then went to the King with their report.  These pryings accomplished but little.  She told as much as she considered advisable, and kept the rest to herself.  Both threats and trickeries were wasted upon her.  She did not care for the threats, and the traps caught nothing.  She was perfectly frank and childlike about these things.  She knew the bishops were sent by the King, that their questions were the King’s questions, and that by all law and custom a King’s questions must be answered; yet she told the King in her naive way at his own table one day that she answered only such of those questions as suited her.

The bishops finally concluded that they couldn’t tell whether Joan was sent by God or not.  They were cautious, you see.  There were two powerful parties at Court; therefore to make a decision either way would infallibly embroil them with one of those parties; so it seemed to them wisest to roost on the fence and shift the burden to other shoulders.  And that is what they did.  They made final report that Joan’s case was beyond their powers, and recommended that it be put into the hands of the learned and illustrious doctors of the University of Poitiers.  Then they retired from the field, leaving behind them this little item of testimony, wrung from them by Joan’s wise reticence:  they said she was a “gentle and simple little shepherdess, very candid, but not given to talking.”