With respect to indecency in dress, the preacher insisted upon running a thick cord between the men and women of his audiences. The mixing of the sexes in public he gravely denounced, and the bareness of women’s breasts and the tightness of men’s hose excited his most eloquent tirades. The reason of the cord he quaintly phrased: “I perceive that sly doings will be going on!” The King of Sicily, Louis III., and Duke René, were quite in accord with the friar’s philippics; but the “King of Bourges” was another sort of man, and much of the coolness which existed between himself and Queen Marie was due to her moderation in dress and quietness of manner. Charles, it was said, chanced to hear the friar one day at Ponthieu, where he was in residence, and ordered him to keep silence and depart. The friar retired to his monastery after a year of eloquence and exertions, but his animadversions upon the lives of the higher clergy led to his being summoned to Rome, to answer to certain charges of breach of monkish discipline and errors of doctrine. The poor man seems to have felt his position keenly, so keenly, indeed, that to escape judgment he jumped out of the window of his cell and decamped. Being quickly captured, he was arraigned before the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and condemned to be burnt as a heretic. Perhaps he deserved punishment for his unguarded language, but he paid dearly indeed as a reformer of gay women’s fashions and gross parsons’ passions!
The years 1427 and 1428 saw France plunged in warfare. King Charles shook himself, metaphorically, and registered a vow that he would drive out every “desecrating English dog.” He bestirred himself, and led forlorn hopes here and there, only to meet with disaster; and then he gave way to despair, and declared that he would do no more for France or for himself. Queen Marie, with true Anjou-Aragon grit, chided him with his faint-heartedness, and one day she surprised him greatly by appearing in a full suit of armour and armed, and declared that “If you, Charles of France, will not lead your troops, I will!” Her example was contagious, for within a week scores of loyal, devoted women assumed mail and stood for the weal or woe of France. These heroic doings were noised abroad, and possibly they had effect in a very unexpected quarter, for in 1429 another heroine appeared in armour from the eastern frontier of France, and made good woman’s claim to military prowess. Thus quaintly wrote Monstrelet of her:
“In the course of this year (1429) a young girl called Jehanne, about twenty years of age, and dressed like a man, came to Charles, King of France, at Chinon. She was born in the village of Droimy, on the borders of Burgundy and Lorraine, not far from Vaucouleurs. She had been for some time an ostler and chambermaid at an inn, and had shown much courage in riding horses to water and in other feats unusual for young women to do. She called herself a ‘Maiden inspired by the Divine Grace,’ and said that she was sent to restore Charles to his kingdom.”
Very little has been recorded of what Queen Marie felt and said concerning that strange visitor. Nobody in all that recklessly gay Court at Chinon viewed the coming of the maid of Domremy more eagerly or more hopefully than did she. She had failed to rouse the King to strike a new blow for his throne, it is true, but she anxiously prayed that this heaven-sent village girl might be the means of doing so. The Queen gave La Pucelle a most sympathetic welcome. The mysteries of devotion and the dictates of religion had in her a very reverent disciple. Apartments were prepared for Jeanne’s reception quite near her own boudoir and private oratory, and its priest was placed at her disposal.
If Jeanne was dumbfounded at the spectacle of a King wholly apathetic to the duties of his high station, and of a Court abandoned, in the midst of dire disaster, to all the frivolities of the idle and the dissolute, she had at least one solace. The beautiful and serious face of the young Queen was to her a comfort and a stay. Looking from one bedizened beauty to another in that fatuous assembly, her eyes fastened themselves upon the one figure that was dissimilar to the rest,—the figure of a good woman, the daughter of the good Queen Yolande. She looked to her like what she conceived of her own saintly Margaret, of the Bois de Chènus. Marie received her unsophisticated visitor with emotion. She entered fully into her story, and conversed daily with her in private about herself, her home, her mission, and her “voices,” and thus she gained the girl’s confidence and her love. If Jeanne had conceived profound veneration for Queen Yolande,—she even called her “my St. Catherine,”—her sentiments towards Queen Marie were those of the most tender affection. Marie, so near her own age, so modest, so simple, and so true, became Jeanne’s confidant and loving patroness. To Marie the mere sight of the girl and her frank, girlish ways was quite sufficient, had she sought for proof positive, to dispel from her mind any suspicions which may have been forced upon her about Jeanne’s relations with her dear brother, René de Bar. Of course, she knew him far too well to credit any tales of faithlessness or dishonour on his part. He and she had been, till he was carried off to Bar-le-Duc by the good Cardinal Louis de Bar, the very dearest and most intimate of playmates in and out of school. Their intercourse had never ceased; such never fails between kindred souls, though parted by hemispheres. René was a just man still, and a true knight. Jeanne likened him to her own St. Michael.
All through Jeanne’s ordeals,—first the open scoffs of the courtiers and servitors at Chinon, then the covert jeers of the divines and busybodies at Poitiers, and lastly the base insinuations of libertines and adventurers,—the Queen stood by La Pucelle. Queen Yolande’s panel of matrons found Marie’s tribute of the utmost value; she staked her royal prerogative upon the girl’s absolute chastity, and the prying, posturing Court bowed to her decision.
If Queen Yolande clothed the maid in shining armour within the great Hall of Audience of Angers Castle, on the eve of the advance upon Orléans, Queen Marie knelt with her in prayer in the solemn choir of Angers Cathedral from Vespers to Compline. How much of her strength of will and the promptness of her action Jeanne d’Arc gained from the whole-hearted favour of these two good Queens the world may never know, but this much we all can apprehend: that unselfish human sympathy is a more mobile force than the uncertainties of Providence.
We can never know why Queen Marie was denied the satisfaction of witnessing and sharing in the coronation of Charles at Reims. She was living quietly at Bourges when the King set off for the metropolitical cathedral under the conduct of La Pucelle and of her brother René. She was prepared for the expedition, and her robes of state were ready for the ceremony, when suddenly Charles commanded her to remain where she was, saying that the march was full of dangers and quite impossible for the Queen and her ladies. La Pucelle begged the King to recall his prohibitions, saying that Queen Marie was quite as worthy as was he to receive a crown. The poor Queen put by her finery,—perhaps not altogether sorrowfully,—and went to reflect awhile at Gien upon the untowardness of human affairs in general and the inconsequences of Charles in particular. Her parting with Jeanne was affecting; Queen and peasant embraced each other affectionately—and never more they met.
II.
After the disastrous battle of Bulgneville, Duchess Isabelle of Lorraine set off to Vienne in Dauphiné, a province which ever remained faithful to the royal house of France, where the Court of Charles VII. was established, to claim his aid for her captive husband languishing at Bracon. In her train went her fairest Maid of Honour, Agnes Sorel, just twenty years of age; she was Mistress of the Robes to the Duchess. She made an immediate impression upon the jejune King, who urged Isabelle to allow her to be transferred to the suite of his consort—perhaps by way of quid pro quo. Queen Marie added her entreaties to the monarch’s suit. She had failed completely to rouse her husband; perhaps she thought Agnes would be more successful. The Duchess would not hear of the arrangement, and the beauteous Maid of Honour was anything but eager to be the creature of so unattractive a master.