"Is it not said that a woman shall ruin France and a young maid restore it?"
She pressed him to take her to Vaucouleurs to Sire Robert de Baudricourt, captain of the bailiwick, for she wished to go to the dauphin and carry assistance to him.
Her uncle gave way, and on the 13th of May, 1428, he did take her to Vaucouleurs.
"I come on behalf of my Lord," she said to Sire de Baudricourt, "to bid you send word to the dauphin to keep himself well in hand and not to give battle to his foes, for my Lord will presently give him succor."
"Who is thy Lord?" asked Baudricourt.
"The King of Heaven," answered Joan.
Baudricourt set her down and urged her uncle to take her back to her parents "with a good slap o' the face."
In July, 1428, a fresh invasion of Burgundians occurred at Domremy, and redoubled the popular excitement there. Shortly afterwards the report touching the siege of Orleans arrived there. Joan, more and more passionately possessed with her idea, returned to Vau-couleurs.
"I must go," said she to Sire de Baudricourt, "for to raise the siege of Orleans. I will go should I have to wear, off my legs to the knee."
She returned to Vaucouleurs without taking leave of her parents. "Had I possessed," said she to her judges at Rouen, "a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers and had I been a king's daughter, I should have gone." Baudricourt, impressed without being convinced, did not oppose her remaining at Vaucouleurs, and sent an account of this singular young girl to Charles, Duke of Lorraine, at Nancy, and perhaps even, according to some chronicles, to the King's court.