river to angle for a king, where many a gay creature was sporting that
masqueraded as kings in dress? Nay, even more than any true king would have
done: for, in Southey's version of the story, the Dauphin says, by way of
trying the virgin's magnetic sympathy with royalty,

----"on the throne,
I the while mingling with the menial throng,
Some courtier shall he seated."

This usurper is even crowned: "the jeweled crown shines on a menial's
head." But really, that is "_un peu fort_;" and the mob of spectators might
raise a scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, and the
Dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of treason. For the Dauphin
could not lend more than belonged to him. According to the popular notion,
he had no crown for himself, but, at most, a _petit ecu_, worth thirty
pence; consequently none to lend, on any pretence whatever, until the
consecrated Maid should take him to Rheims. This was the _popular_ notion
in France. The same notion as to the indispensableness of a coronation
prevails widely in England. But, certainly, it was the Dauphin's interest
to support the popular notion, as he meant to use the services of Joanna.
For, if he were king already, what was it that she could do for him beyond
Orleans? And above all, if he were king without a coronation, and without
the oil from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open to him by
celerity above his competitor the English boy? Now was to be a race for a
coronation: he that should win _that_ race, carried the superstition of
France along with him. Trouble us not, lawyer, with your quillets. We are
illegal blockheads; so thoroughly without law, that we don't know even if
we have a right to be blockheads; and our mind is made up--that the first
man drawn from the oven of coronation at Rheims, is the man that is baked
into a king. All others are counterfeits, made of base Indian meal, damaged