Joan's chief anxiety was that she might be able to attend Mass every
day. 'If we are able to attend the service of the Church, all will be
well,' she said to her escort. The soldiers only twice allowed her the
opportunity of doing so, on one occasion in the principal church of
the town of Auxerre.

They crossed the Loire at Gien; and at that place, in the church
dedicated to one of Joan's special saints--St. Catherine, for whom she
held a personal adoration--she thrice attended Mass.

When the little band entered Touraine, they were out of danger, and
here the news of the approach of the Maid spread like wildfire over
the country-side. Even the besieged burghers of Orleans learned that
the time of their delivery from the English was at hand.

Perhaps it was when passing through Fierbois that Joan may have been
told of the existence in its church of the sword which so
conspicuously figured in her later story, and was believed to have
been miraculously revealed to her.

A letter was despatched from Fierbois to Charles at Chinon, announcing
the Maid's approach, and craving an audience. At length, on the 6th of
March, Joan of Arc arrived beneath the long stretch of castle walls of
the splendid old Castle of Chinon.

That imposing ruin on the banks of the river Vienne is even in its
present abandoned state one of the grandest piles of mediæval building
in the whole of France. Crowning the rich vale of Touraine, with the
river winding below, and reflecting its castle towers in the still
water, this time-honoured home of our Plantagenet kings has been not