Dunois, and behind her the captains of the garrison and several of the
most distinguished burgesses of Orleans who had gone out to meet her.
The population, one and all, rushed thronging round her, carrying
torches, and greeting her arrival "with joy as great as if they had seen
God come down amongst them. They felt," says the Journal of the Siege,
"all of them recomforted and as it were disbesieged by the divine virtue
which they had been told existed in this simple maid." In their anxiety
to approach her, to touch her, one of their lighted torches set fire to
her banner. Joan disengaged herself with her horse as cleverly as it
could have been done by the most skilful horseman, and herself
extinguished the flame. The crowd attended her to the church whither she
desired to go first of all to render thanks to God, and then to the house
of John Boucher, the Duke of Orleans's treasurer, where she was received
together with her two brothers and the two gentlemen who had been her
guides from Vaucouleurs. The treasurer's wife was one of the most
virtuous city dames in Orleans, and from this night forth her daughter
Charlotte had Joan for her bedfellow. A splendid supper had been
prepared for her; but she would merely dip some slices of bread in wine
and water. Neither her enthusiasm nor her success, the two greatest
tempters to pride in mankind, made any change in her modesty and
simplicity.

The very day after her arrival she would have liked to go and attack the
English in their bastilles, within which they kept themselves shut up.
La Hire was pretty much of her opinion; but Dunois and the captains of
the garrison thought they ought to await the coming of the troops which
had gone to cross the Loire at Blois, and the supports which several
French garrisons in the neighborhood had received orders to forward to
Orleans. Joan insisted. Sire de Gamaches, one of the officers present,
could not contain himself. "Since ear is given," said he, "to the advice