As she rode to Rheims, some people from Domremy met her and asked her if she was afraid of nothing.
“Of nothing but treachery,” she said, and, from this day, she met treachery among the King’s advisers, who held long councils, and did not fight.
As she rode from Rheims towards Paris, the people shouted round her, and she said that they were kind people, and she would like to be buried in their cathedral—she, who was never to be buried in the earth.
“Joan,” said the Archbishop, “in what place do you expect to die?”
“Where God pleases, for of that hour and that place I know nothing more than you do. But would to God that now I might take off my armour, and go home to my father and mother,” for, as she had seen her father, she was longing for her mother more than ever.
After this, the people about the King-, and the King himself, did not obey Joan, and all went wrong.
CHAPTER XI. HOW THE MAID WAS BETRAYED AT PARIS
THE French should have followed the Maid straight to Paris, as she bade them do. But they went here and went there, and one day their army and that of the Duke of Bedford met, but did not fight; and another day there were skirmishes between the English and the Scots, “who fought very bravely,” says the Burgundian knight, Enguerrand de Manstrelet, who wrote a history of those times. The strong town of Compiègne, which had often been taken and retaken, yielded to Joan’s army, and the King stayed there, doing nothing, which was what he liked, and the Duke of Burgundy gave him excuses for loitering by sending ambassadors, and pretending that he would give up Paris, for at this time there was no English garrison there. The poor people of the town were on the side of Joan and the King, and now, when the English were out of the great city, was the time to take it. But the King kept hoping to make peace with the Duke of Burgundy, so Joan, with her friend the Duke of Alençon, went to Saint Denis, quite close to Paris, where the Kings of France used to be buried: Saint Denis was the Saint of France, as Saint George was the Saint of England, and Saint Andrew of Scotland. There fought the Duke and the Maid, but the King came on very slowly, while Joan was in the front of battle every day, at one gate of Paris or another. At last, by often going to him, and urging him to come, Alençon brought the King to Saint Denis, but not before a strong new English army had arrived in the town, of which the walls and towers were very high and thick, and the fosses broad and deep, and full of water.