knight had conceived the brilliant idea of finding out, through the
assistance of the holy man, whether Joan was under the influence of
good or evil spirits, before allowing her to go to the King's Court.

As may be imagined, Joan received the priest with all respect,
kneeling before him; and the good father was soon able to reassure de
Baudricourt that the evil spirits had no part or parcel in the heart
of the maid who received him with so much humility.

[Illustration: CHINON.]

For three weeks Joan was left in suspense at Vaucouleurs, and probably
it was not until a messenger had been sent to Chinon and had returned
with a favourable answer, that at length de Baudricourt gave a
somewhat unwilling consent to Joan's leaving Vaucouleurs on her
mission to Chinon. During those weary weeks of anxious waiting, Joan's
hostess bore witness in after days to the manner in which the time was
passed: of how she would help Catherine in her spinning and other
homely work, but, as when at home, her chief delight was to attend the
Church services, and she would often remain to confession, after the
early communion in the church. The chapel in which she worshipped was
not the parochial church of Vaucouleurs, but was attached to the
castle, and it still exists. In that castle chapel, and in a
subterranean crypt beneath the Collegiate Church of Notre Dame de
Vaucouleurs, Joan passed much of her time. Seven and twenty years
after these events, one Jean le Fumeux, at that time a chorister of
the chapel, a lad of eleven, bore witness, at the trial in which the
memory of Joan was vindicated, to having often seen her kneeling
before an image of the Virgin. This image, a battered and rude one,
still exists. Nothing less artistic can be imagined; but no one, be