On February 23, 1429, the gate of the little castle of Vaucouleurs, 'the
Gate of France,' which is still standing, was thrown open. Seven
travellers rode out, among them two squires, Jean de Nouillompont and
Bertrand de Poulengy, with their attendants, and Joan the Maid. 'Go, and
let what will come of it come!' said Robert de Baudricourt. He did not
expect much to come of it. It was a long journey--they were eleven days
on the road--and a dangerous. But Joan laughed at danger. 'God will
clear my path to the king, for to this end I was born.' Often they rode
by night, stopping at monasteries when they could. Sometimes they slept
out under the sky. Though she was so young and so beautiful, with the
happiness of her long desire in her eyes, and the glory of her future
shining on her, these two young gentlemen never dreamed of paying their
court to her and making love, as in romances they do, for they
regarded her 'as if she had been an angel.' 'They were in awe of her,'
they said, long afterwards, long after the angels had taken Joan to be
with their company in heaven. And all the knights who had seen her said
the same. Dunois and d'Aulon and the beautiful Duc d'Alencon, '_le beau
Duc_' as Joan called him, they all said that she was 'a thing enskied
and sainted.' So on they rode, six men and a maid, through a country
full of English and Burgundian soldiery. There were four rivers to
cross, Marne, Aube, Seine, and Yonne, and the rivers were 'great and
mickle o' spate,' running red with the rains from bank to bank, so that
they could not ford the streams, but must go by unfriendly towns, where
alone there were bridges. Joan would have liked to stay and go to church
in every town, but this might not be. However, she heard mass thrice at
the church of her favourite saint, Catherine de Fierbois, between Loches
and Chinon, in a friendly country. And a strange thing happened later in
that church.
From Fierbois Joan made some clerk write to the king that she was coming
to help him, and that she would know him among all his men. Probably it
was here that she wrote to beg her parents' pardon, and they forgave
her, she says. Meanwhile news reached the people then besieged in
Orleans that a marvellous Maiden was riding to their rescue. On March 6
Joan arrived in Chinon, where for two or three days the king's advisers
would not let him see her. At last they yielded, and she went straight
up to him, and when he denied that he was the king, she told him that
she knew well who he was.
'There is the king,' said Charles, pointing to a richly dressed noble.
'No, fair sire. You are he!'
Still, it was not easy to believe. Joan stayed at Chinon in the house of
a noble lady. The young Duc d'Alencon was on her side from the first,
bewitched by her noble horsemanship, which she had never learned. Great
people came to see her, but, when she was alone, she wept and prayed.
The king sent messengers to inquire about her at Domremy, but time was
going on, and Orleans was not relieved.