Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/358

 312 POLITICAL HERESY.— THE STATE. her father, Jacques Dare, had dreams of her going off with the sol- diers, and he told her brothers that if he thought that his dreams would come true he wished they would drown her, or he would do it himself. Thenceforth she was closely watched, but the urgency of her celestial counsellors grew into reproaches for her tardiness, and further delay was unendurable. Obtaining permission to visit her uncle, Denis Laxart, she persuaded him to communicate her secret to Eobert de Baudricourt, who held for the king the neigh- boring castle of Vaucouleurs. Her Voices had predicted that she would be twice repulsed and would succeed the third time. It so turned out. The good knight, who at first contemptuously ad- vised her uncle to box her ears, at length was persuaded to ask the king's permission to send the girl to him. She must have ac- quired a reputation of inspiration, for while awaiting the response the Duke of Lorraine, who was sick, sent for her and she told him that if he wished a cure he must first reconcile himself with his wife. On the royal permission being accorded, de Baudricourt gave to her a man's dress and a sword, with a slender escort of a knight and four men, and washed his hands of the affair.* The little party started, February 13, 1429, on their perilous ride of a hundred and fifty leagues, in the depth of winter, through the enemy's country. That they should accomplish it without misadventure in eleven days was in itself regarded as a miracle, and as manifesting the favor of God. On February 21 they reached Chinon, where Charles held his court, only to encounter new obstacles. It is true that some persons of sense, as we are told, recognized in her the fulfilment of Merlin's prophecy, " Des- cendet virgo dorsum sagittarii etflores virgineos obscurabit /" others found her foretold by the Sibyl and by the Venerable Bede ; others asked her whether there was not in her land a forest known as the Bois Chenu, for there was an ancient prediction that from the Bois Chenu there would come a wonder-working maiden — and they were delighted on learning that it lay but a league from her fathers house. Those, however, who relied on worldly wisdom shook their heads and pronounced her mission an absurdity — in fact, it was charitable to regard her as insane. It shows, indeed, to what depth of despair the royal cause had fallen, that her pre-
 * Proems, pp. 471, 485. — Chronique, p. 454. — L'Averdy (ubi sup. III. 301).