1680 he died in concealment.** It is clear that if Le Fevre was the
Queen's confessor, the sentries at Somerset House could prove
whether he was there on the day of Godfrey's murder. No such
evidence was adduced. But if Le Fevre was not the Queen's
confessor, he would scarcely have facilities for smuggling a dead
body out of 'a private door. '

*Longleat MS., Pollock, p. 386.
**Foley, v. 875-877.



IV. THE FALSE JEANNE D'ARC.



Who that ever saw Jeanne d'Arc could mistake her for another woman?
No portrait of the Maid was painted from the life, but we know the
light perfect figure, the black hair cut short like a soldier's, and
we can imagine the face of her, who, says young Laval, writing to
his mother after his first meeting with the deliverer of France,
'seemed a thing all divine.' Yet even two of her own brothers
certainly recognised another girl as the Maid, five years after her
death by fire. It is equally certain that, eight years after the
martyrdom of Jeanne, an impostor dwelt for several days in Orleans,
and was there publicly regarded as the heroine who raised the siege
in 1429. Her family accepted the impostor for sixteen years. These
facts rest on undoubted evidence.

To unravel the threads of the story is a task very difficult. My