"Gallant sir, are your spurs good?"
"What?" asked the Duke in surprise. "Spurs? To flee?"
"No, sir—to pursue!" was the answer.[102]
Indeed, after their defeat, the enemy was pursued at the point of the lance for over three leagues. But these victories were won by the warrior maid not over the English merely, they were won also over the ill will of most of the French captains, whose envy of her increased in the same measure as her triumph. Accordingly she no longer doubted their secret animosity, and a vague presentiment told her she would be eventually betrayed by them to the enemy. The foreboding did not affect her conduct. Long before had she made a sacrifice of her life.
Considering that these last triumphs must have finally put an end to Charles's hesitancy, Joan returned to him, and said:
"Sire, Meung, Beaugency, Jargeau have all been carried by assault, is that enough? The English have been defeated in pitched battle at Patay, is that enough? Talbot, Warwick, Suffolk, are either captured or forced to flee, is that enough? Would you still hesitate to follow me to Rheims and be consecrated King by the command of God?"
The royal coward did not now hesitate, he declined point blank. The English had been driven out of Touraine, but still they held the provinces that had to be crossed in order to reach Rheims.
Joan was unable to overcome her disgust. No longer expecting anything from the coward, she was of a mind to give him up to his fate. In despair she took off her armor, left the court, and communicating her designs to none, she took to the woods where she wandered the whole day intending to return to Domremy. Towards evening, and noticing that she had lost her way, she asked for hospitality at a poor peasant house of Touraine.[103] Unarmed and in her male attire, Joan looked like a young page. She was received as such by the good people who gladly gave her shelter, treated her at their best and made room for her at their hearth. Joan sat down. The peaceful aspect of the rustic home recalled to her mind the happy days of her childhood spent in Domremy. The sweet recollections of the paternal home drew involuntary tears. Struck by her sadness, her hosts questioned her with timid and respectful interest.
"How can you cry in such happy days as these," they asked naïvely, "in these days of the deliverance of Gaul? They are happy days, especially for us peasants! For us who are now at last delivered from the English by the grace of the Lord and the bravery of Joan the Maid, our redeeming angel!"
In the enthusiasm of their gratitude, the peasant hosts showed the tenderly touched warrior maid a bit of parchment fastened to the wall above the hearth. On the parchment the name of "Joan" was inscribed, surmounted with a cross. In default of the image of their beloved liberatrix, these poor people had inscribed her name and thus gave token of the sincere reverence that they rendered the heroine. The questions were innumerable that they plied their young guest with regarding Joan. Perhaps he had seen her, seen that holy maid, the new Our Lady of the peasants who had suffered so grievously at the hands of the English before she drove them away. The questions were tantamount to a choir of benedictions mixed with passionate adoration of the Maid. More and more touched by these words, Joan began to reproach herself severely for her momentary weakness. To abandon Charles VII to his fate was to abandon France; it was above all to expose these poor peasants, the humble and industrious race of which she was herself born, to fall back under the yoke of the stranger; it was to re-deliver the poor wretches to all the horrors of a war which it was her mission to put an end to. These thoughts re-invigorated her; they inspired her with the resolve to struggle onward for the accomplishment of her projects, to struggle doggedly even against the King, against his councilors, against the captains who pursued her with their hatred and whom she perhaps stood in greater fear of than of the English. The latter fought in arms in the open; the former labored in the dark, and plotted treason. Absorbed in these meditations, Joan threw herself upon a bed of fresh cut grass, the only couch that her hosts could offer her. She invoked the support and the advice of her saints, and their dear voices speedily whispered in her ear: