the mind of Charles when he was met by this strange, authoritative
statement, uttered like all that Jeanne said, _de la part de Dieu_.

The impression thus made, however, was on Charles alone, and he was
surrounded by councillors, so much the more pedantic and punctilious as
they were incapable, and placed amidst pressing necessities with which
in themselves they had no power to cope. It may easily be allowed, also,
that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young King on the
word of a peasant girl was in itself, according to every law of reason,
madness and folly. She would seem to have had the women on her side
always and at every point. The Church did not stir, or else was hostile;
the commanders and military men about, regarded with scornful disgust
the idea that an enterprise which they considered hopeless should be
confided to an ignorant woman--all with perfect reason we are obliged to
allow. Probably it was to gain time--yet without losing the aid of such
a stimulus to the superstitious among the masses--and to retard any rash
undertaking--that it was proposed to subject Jeanne to an examination
of doctors and learned men touching her faith and the character of
her visions, which all this time had been of continual recurrence, yet
charged with no further revelation, no mystic creed, but only with the
one simple, constantly repeated command.

Accordingly, after some preliminary handling by half a dozen bishops,
Jeanne was taken to Poitiers--where the university and the local
parliament, all the learning, law, and ecclesiastical wisdom which were
on the side of the King, were assembled--to undergo this investigation.
It is curious that the entire history of this wildest and strangest of
all visionary occurrences is to be found in a series of processes at
law, each part recorded and certified under oath; but so it is. The
village maid was placed at the bar, before a number of acute legists,