The grave doctors and masters and the principal clerks of the Parlement of Poitiers, in companies of two and three, repaired to the house of Jean Rabateau, and each one of them in turn questioned Jeanne. The first to come were Jean Lombard, Guillaume le Maire, Guillaume Aimery, Pierre Turelure, and Jacques Meledon. Brother Jean Lombard asked: "Wherefore have you come? The King desires to know what led you to come to him."
Jeanne's reply greatly impressed these clerks: "As I kept my flocks a Voice appeared to me. The Voice said: 'God has great pity on the people of France. Jeanne, thou must go into France.' On hearing these words I began to weep. Then the Voice said unto me: 'Go to Vaucouleurs. There shalt thou find a captain, who will take thee safely into France, to the King. Fear not.' I did as I was bidden, and I came to the King without hindrance."[747]
Then the word fell to Brother Guillaume Aimery: "According to what you have said, the Voice told you that God will deliver the people of France from their distress; but if God will deliver them he has no need of men-at-arms."
"In God's name," replied the Maid, "the men-at-arms will fight, and God will give the victory."
Maître Guillaume declared himself satisfied.[748]
On the 22nd of March, Maître Pierre de Versailles and Maître Jean Érault went together to Jean Rabateau's lodging. The squire, Gobert Thibault, whom Jeanne had already seen at Chinon, came with them. He was a young man and very simple, one who believed without asking for a sign. As they came in Jeanne went to meet them, and, striking the squire on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, she said: "I wish I had many men as willing as you."[749]
With men-at-arms she felt at her ease. But the doctors she could not tolerate, and she suffered torture when they came to argue with her. Although these theologians showed her great consideration, their eternal questions wearied her; their slowness and heaviness exasperated her. She bore them a grudge for not believing in her straightway, without proof, and for asking her for a sign, which she could not give them, since neither Saint Michael nor Saint Catherine nor Saint Margaret appeared during the examination. In retirement, in the oratory, and in the lonely fields the heavenly visitants came to her in crowds; angels and saints, descending from heaven, flocked around her. But when the doctors came, immediately the Jacob's ladder was drawn up. Besides, the clerks were theologians, and she was a saint. Relations are always strained between the heads of the Church Militant and those devout women who communicate directly with the Church Triumphant. She realised that the revelations granted to her so abundantly inspired her most favourable judges with doubts, suspicion, and even mistrust. She dared not confide to them much of the mystery of her Voices, and when the Churchmen were not present she told Alençon, her fair Duke, that she knew more and could do more than she had ever told all those clerks.[750] It was not to them she had been sent; it was not for them that she had come. She felt awkward in their presence, and their manners were the occasion of that irritation which is discernible in more than one of her replies.[751] Sometimes when they questioned her she retreated to the end of her bench and sulked.
"We come to you from the King," said Maître Pierre de Versailles.
She replied with a bad grace: "I am quite aware that you are come to question me again. I don't know A from B."[752] But to the question: "Wherefore do you come?" she made answer eagerly: "I come from the King of Heaven to raise the siege of Orléans, and take the King to be crowned and anointed at Reims. Maître Jean Érault, have you ink and paper? Write what I shall tell you." And she dictated a brief manifesto to the English captains: "You, Suffort, Clasdas, and La Poule, in the name of the King of Heaven I call upon you to return to England."[753]
Maître Jean Érault, who wrote at her dictation, was, like most of the clerks, favourably disposed towards her. Further, he had his own ideas. He recollected that Marie of Avignon, surnamed La Gasque, had uttered true and memorable prophecies to King Charles VI. Now La Gasque had told the King that the realm was to suffer many sorrows; and she had seen weapons in the sky. Her story of her vision had concluded with these words: "While I was afeard, believing myself called upon to take these weapons, a voice comforted me, saying: 'They are not for thee, but for a Virgin, who shall come and with these weapons deliver the realm of France.'" Maître Jean Érault meditated on these marvellous revelations and came to believe that Jeanne was the Virgin announced by Marie of Avignon.[754]