The Queen of France, who was then very old and whose husband had long ago deserted her, heard tell of the Maid of Le Mans, and wrote to Messire Martin Berruyer, requesting him to make the damsel known unto her.
Thus there befel, what we have seen happening over and over again in this history, that when a devout person, leading a contemplative life uttered prophecies, those in places of authority grew curious concerning her and desired to submit her to the judgment of the Church that they might know whether the goodness that appeared in her were true or false. Certain officers of the King visited La Férone at Le Mans.
As revelations touching the realm of France had been vouchsafed to her, she spoke to them the following words:
"Commend me very humbly to the King and bid him recognise the grace which God granteth unto him, and lighten the burdens of his people."
In the December of 1460, she was summoned before the Royal Council, which was then sitting at Tours, while the King, who was sick of an ulcer in the leg, was residing in the Château of Les Montils.[1146] The Maid of Le Mans was examined in like manner as the Maid Jeanne had been, but the result was unfavourable; she was found wanting in everything. Brought before the ecclesiastical court she was convicted of imposture. It appeared that she was no maid, but was living in concubinage with a cleric, that certain persons in the service of my Lord of Le Mans instructed her in what she was to say, and that such was the origin of the revelations she made to the Reverend Father in God, Messire Martin Berruyer, under the seal of the confession. Convicted of being a hypocrite, an idolatress, an invoker of demons, a witch, a magician, lascivious, dissolute, an enchantress, a mine of falsehood, she was condemned to have a fool's cap put on her head and to be preached at in public, in the towns of Le Mans, Tours and Laval. On the 2nd of May, 1461, she was exhibited to the folk at Tours, wearing a paper cap and over her head a scroll on which her deeds were set forth in lines of Latin and of French. Maître Guillaume de Châteaufort, Grand Master of the Royal College of Navarre, preached to her. Then she was cast into close confinement in a prison, there to weep over her sins for the space of seven years, eating the bread of sorrow and drinking the water of affliction;[1147] at the end of which time she rented a house of ill fame.[1148]
On Wednesday, the 22nd of July, 1461, covered with ulcers internal and external, believing himself poisoned and perhaps not without reason, Charles VII died, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, in his Château of Mehun-sur-Yèvre.[1149]
On Thursday, the 6th of August, his body was borne to the Church of Saint-Denys in France and placed in a chapel hung with velvet; the nave was draped with black satin, the vault was covered with blue cloth embroidered with flowers-de-luce.[1150] During the ceremony, which took place on the following day, a funeral oration was delivered on Charles VII. The preacher was no less a personage than the most highly renowned professor at the University of Paris, the doctor, who according to the Princes of the Roman Church was ever aimable and modest, he who had been the stoutest defender of the liberties of the Gallican Church, the ecclesiastic who, having declined a Cardinal's hat, bore to the threshold of an illustrious old age none other title than that of Dean of the Canons of Notre Dame de Paris, Maître Thomas de Courcelles.[1151] Thus it befell that the assessor of Rouen, who had been the most bitterly bent on procuring Jeanne's cruel condemnation, celebrated the memory of the victorious King whom the Maid had conducted to his solemn coronation.