The Maid, however, had been wounded in the foot by a calthrop, and was besides mortally weary. She went back to Orleans, to the kindly shelter of the Boucher roof. It was Friday; she usually fasted on that day, but this time she felt the absolute need of food. To-morrow was before her, when she must have her full strength; she must eat, must rest; for this reason she had come back, though her heart was full of anxiety, dreading the night attack which her keen military sense told her the enemy might and ought to make. But the enemy was tired, too, and discouraged to boot: no attack came.
"Rouse ye at daybreak to-morrow!" she charged her followers. "You shall do better still than to-day. Keep by my side, for I have much to do more than ever I had, and blood will flow from my body, above my breast."
Then the good Maid said her prayers, and lay down quietly to rest, and to such sleep as her wound and her anxious heart would allow.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Lang.
[37] Trans. F. C. Lowell.
CHAPTER X THE RELIEF
Anxious indeed was this night for the Maid. Her unerring instinct told her that the English should make a counter attack, under cover of night, on the weary French, sleeping on their arms under the open sky or in the ruined Augustines, the broad stream flowing between them and safety. This, all authorities agree, they ought to have done; exactly why they did not do it, perhaps John Talbot alone knows. We know only that the night passed quietly, and that at sunrise on May seventh Joan heard mass and set forth on her high errand.