up even the shadow of so grave a censure upon Frenchmen in general,
although in the far distance of the fifteenth century. The two young
men, thus starting upon a dangerous adventure, pledged by their honour
to protect and convey her safely to the King's presence, were noble and
generous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. They
were not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection when
once they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wild
errand. They travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands of
Burgundians or English on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river to
avoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. Sometimes, too,
they had many doubts, Bertrand says, perhaps as to their reception at
Chinon, perhaps even whether their mission might not expose them to the
ridicule of their kind, if not to unknown dangers of magic and contact
with the Evil One, should this wonderful girl turn out no inspired
virgin but a pretender or sorceress. Jean de Metz informs us that she
bade them not to fear, that she had been sent to do what she was now
doing; that her brothers in paradise would tell her how to act, and that
for the last four or five years her brothers in paradise and her God had
told her that she must go to the war to save the kingdom of France. This
phrase must have struck his ear, as he thus repeats it. Her brothers in
paradise! She had not apparently talked of them to anyone as yet, but
now no one could hinder her more, and she felt herself free to speak.
A great calm seems to have been in her soul. She had at last begun her
work. How it was all to end for her she neither foresaw nor asked;
she knew only what she had to do. When they ventured into a town she
insisted on stopping to hear mass, bidding them fear nothing. "God
clears the way for me," she said; "I was born for this," and so
proceeded safe, though threatened with many dangers. There is something
that breathes of supreme satisfaction and content in her repetition of
those words.