"And yet a daughter of the field—a simple shepherdess!"
"The Lord God inspires her—she alone is worth a whole army. The archangels will fight on her side."
"Do you know that Master Tiphaine, the curate of the parish of St. Euterpe, undertook to exorcise the Maid in case she was a sorceress and was possessed of a demon? The clerk carried the cross, the choir-boy the holy-water, and Master Tiphaine carried the sprinkler. But he did not dare to approach the Maid too near, fearing some trick of the spirit of Evil. But Joan smiled and said: 'Come near, good Father, I shall not fly away.'"[42]
"She felt quite sure that she was a daughter of God!"
"Evidently she is a virgin. After the exorcism no clawy demon leaped out of her mouth!"
"Everybody knows that the devil can not inhabit the body of a virgin. Consequently Joan can not be a sorceress, whatever people may have said of her god-mother Sybille."
"So far from suspecting that Joan was an invoker of demons, Master Tiphaine was so edified with her mildness and modesty that the day after the exorcism he admitted her to holy communion—she ate the bread of the angels."
"That was lucky! Who, if not Joan, could eat angels' bread?"
"Do you know, friends, that while the Sire of Baudricourt was waiting for the answer of the King, and, by God, it seems the answer was long in coming, the Duke of Lorraine, hearing the report that Joan was the maid foretold by Merlin, wished to see her?"
"And did he?"