For seven years now Saint Michael the Archangel and the Saints Catherine and Margaret, wearing rich and precious crowns, had been visiting and conversing with her. It was when the bells were ringing, at the hour of compline and of matins, that she could best hear their words.[1164] In those days bells of all kinds, large and small, metropolitan, parochial or conventual, sounded in peals, or, chiming harmoniously, in voices grave or gay, spoke to all men and of all things. Their song descended from the sky to mark the ecclesiastical and civic calendar. They called priests and people to church; they mourned for the dead and they praised God; they announced fairs and field work; they clashed portentous tidings through the sky, and in times of war they called to arms and sounded the alarm. Friendly to the husbandman they scattered the tempest, they warded off hail-storms and drove away pestilence. They put to flight those demons that, flying ceaselessly through the air, haunt the children of men; and to their blessed sound was attributed the power of calming violence.[1165] Saint Catharine, she who visited Jeanne every day, was the patron of bells and bell-ringers. Thus many bells bore her name. In the ringing of bells as in the rustling of leaves, Jeanne was wont to hear her Voices. She seldom heard them without seeing a light in the direction whence they came.[1166] Those Voices called her: "Jeanne, daughter of God!"[1167] Often the Archangel and the Saints appeared to her. When they came she did them reverence, bending her knee and bowing her head; she kissed their feet, knowing it to be a greater mark of respect than kissing the countenance. She was conscious of the fragrance and grateful warmth of their glorified bodies.[1168]
Saint Michael the Archangel did not come alone. There accompanied him angels so numerous and so tiny that they danced like sparks in the damsel's dazzled eyes. When the saints and the Archangel went away, she wept with grief because they had not taken her with them.[1169] In like manner an angel visited Judith in the camp of Holofernes.
One day Jeanne's equerry, Jean d'Aulon, asked her what her Council was, just as my Lord d'Harcourt had done. She replied that she had three councillors, one of whom was always with her. Another was constantly going and coming; the third was the one with whom the other two deliberated.
Sire d'Aulon, more curious than the King, besought and requested her to let him see this Council for once.
She replied: "Your virtues are not great enough and you are not worthy to behold it."[1170]
The good squire never asked again. If he had read the Bible he would have known that Elisha's servant did not see the angels beheld by the prophet (2 Kings VI, 16, 17).
And yet Jeanne imagined that her Council had appeared to the King and his court.
"My King," she said later, "my King and many besides saw and heard the Voices that came to me. The Count of Clermont and two or three others were with him."[1171]
She believed it was so. But in reality she never showed her Voices to anyone. Not even, despite what has been said to the contrary, to that Guy de Cailly who had been following her since Chécy.[1172]
With Brother Pasquerel Jeanne engaged in pious conversation. To him she often expressed the desire that the Church after her death should pray for her and for all the French slain in the war.