Joan of Arc was now seventeen years old: tall and well made. Guy de Laval wrote of her to his mother: "She seems a thing all divine, de son faict, and to see her and hear her." Others call her "beautiful in face and figure," her countenance glad and smiling.
"Elle est plaisante en faite et dite,
Belle et blanche comme la rose,"
says the old mystery play of the siege of Orleans.
Andrew Lang, the most sympathetic of her English biographers,[31] writes thus of her appearance:
"Her hair was black, cut short like a soldier's; as to her eyes and features, having no information, we may conceive of them as we please. Probably she had grey eyes, and a clear pale colour under the tan of sun and wind. She was so tall that she could wear a man's clothes, those, for example, of Durand Lassois."
There is no authentic likeness of the Maid; she never sat for her portrait; yet who is there that cannot picture to himself that slender figure, in the black pourpoint, with the short gray cloak thrown back over her shoulder, coming forward to meet and greet the Prince to whom she was to give a kingdom, receiving in return a felon's grave?
Accounts vary as to the scene that followed. Some chroniclers say that Joan asked that "she should not be deceived, but be shown plainly him to whom she must speak"; others assert that Charles turned aside at her approach, effacing himself, as it were, behind some of his followers. However it was, Joan showed no hesitation, but went directly up to the Prince and made obeisance humbly.
"Gentle Dauphin," she said, "I am called Joan the Maid. The King of Heaven sendeth you word by me that you shall be anointed and crowned in the city of Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, who is King of France. It is God's pleasure that our enemies, the English, should depart to their own country; if they depart not, evil will come to them, and the kingdom is sure to continue yours."
Charles listened, impressed but not yet convinced. He talked with her a little, and sent her back to her lodging (in a tower of the castle this time, in charge of "one William Bellier, an officer of the castle, and his wife, a matron of character and piety"[32]) without making any definite answer. This was hard for the Maid to bear; she knew there was no time to lose; yet she went patiently; she was used to waiting, used to rebuffs. There in her tower lodging, many visitors came to her: churchmen, with searching questions as to her orthodoxy; captains, no less keen in inquiry as to her knowledge of arms: finally, "certain noble dames," deputed by the Dauphin, to determine whether she were pure virgin or no. Doubtless these many persons came in many moods; they all left in one; the Maid was a good Maid, gentle and simple: there was no harm in her. Again and again she sought audience of the Dauphin. She could do nothing with a printed page, but the heart of a man, especially of this man, was easy reading for her.