died of a broken heart, and the fame of Rabelais, will ever be
associated with the ancient castle and town. Still, the deathless
interest of Chinon is owing to the residence of the Maid of
Domremy--as one has a better right to call her than of Orleans--in
those early days of her short career, in its burgh and castle. In or
near the street La Haute Rue Saint Maurice, hard by a square which now
bears the name of the heroine, Joan of Arc arrived at noon on Sunday,
the 6th of March.

It would be interesting to know in which of the old gabled houses Joan
resided during the two days before she was admitted to enter the
castle. Local tradition reports that she dwelt with a good housewife
('_chez une bonne femme_'). According to a contemporary plan of
Chinon, dated 1430, a house which belonged to a family named La Barre
was where she lodged; and although the actual house of the La Barres
cannot be identified, there are many houses in the street of Saint
Maurice old enough to have witnessed the advent of the Maid on that
memorable Sunday in the month of March 1430. Few French towns are so
rich in the domestic architecture of the better kind dating from the
early part of the fifteenth century as that of Chinon; and now that
Rouen, Orleans, and Poitiers have been so terribly modernised, a
journey to Chinon well repays the trouble. Little imagination is
required to picture the street with its crowd of courtiers and Court
hangers-on, upon their way to and from the castle above; so mercifully
have time and that far greater destroyer of things of yore dealt with
this old thoroughfare.

Two days elapsed before Joan was admitted to the presence of the King.
A council had been summoned in the castle to determine whether the
Maid should be received by the monarch. The testimony of the knights