"I will ask you another thing. What is the King's condition? Mad, isn't
he?"

"Yes, and his people love him all the more for it. It brings him near to
them by his sufferings; and pitying him makes them love him."

"You say right, Jacques d'Arc. Well, what would you of one that is mad?
Does he know what he does? No. Does he do what others make him do? Yes.
Now, then, I tell you he has signed the treaty."

"Who made him do it?"

"You know, without my telling. The Queen."

Then there was another uproar--everybody talking at once, and all heaping
execrations upon the Queen's head. Finally Jacques d'Arc said:

"But many reports come that are not true. Nothing so shameful as this has
ever come before, nothing that cuts so deep, nothing that has dragged
France so low; therefore there is hope that this tale is but another idle
rumor. Where did you get it?"

The color went out of his sister Joan's face. She dreaded the answer; and
her instinct was right.

"The cur‚ of Maxey brought it."

There was a general gasp. We knew him, you see, for a trusty man.

"Did he believe it?"