down from the cathedral to the river, and with these they bestowed us;
and the next day they smuggled our own proper clothing and other
belongings to us. The family that lodged us--the Pieroons--were French in
sympathy, and we needed to have no secrets from them.

[1] It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was
destroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap,
several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob in
the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is
known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously
guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being guided
by a clerk or her secretary, Louis de Conte. A boulder exists from which
she is known to have mounted her horse when she was once setting out upon
a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago there was a single hair from
her head still in existence. It was drawn through the wax of a seal
attached to the parchment of a state document. It was surreptitiously
snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal relic-hunter, and carried off.
Doubtless it still exists, but only the thief knows where. -- TRANSLATOR.



3 Weaving the Net About Her

IT WAS necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noel and
myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the applied
to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with a good
priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the Great Trial
of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position for me--clerk
to the recorder--and dangerous if my sympathies and the late employment
should be found out. But there was not much danger. Manchon was at bottom