[40] Percival de Cagny.
[41] A. Lang, p. 122.
CHAPTER XI THE DELIVERANCE
It was eight o'clock on the evening of the eighth of May when the people of Orleans gathered in dense masses at the bridgehead and along the riverside to greet their rescuer. Dusk had fallen; they pressed forward with lanterns and torches held aloft, all striving for a sight of the Maid.
"By these flickering lights," says Jules Quicherat, "Joan seemed to them beautiful as the angel conqueror of a demon."
Yet it was not the morning vision of snow and silver, fresh and dewy as her own youth, that had ridden out at daybreak to battle. Weary now was the white charger, drooping his gallant neck; weary was the Maid, faint with the pain of her wound, her white armor dinted and stained. But the people of Orleans saw nothing save their Angel of Deliverance. They pressed round her, eager to touch her armor, her floating standard, the horse which had borne her so bravely through the day. Weary and wounded as she was, she smiled on one and all, and "in the sweetest feminine voice, called them good Christians, and assured them that God would save them."
So she rode on to the Cathedral, where she returned thanks humbly and devoutly to God who had given the victory; then, still surrounded by the shouting, rejoicing throng, home to the house of Boucher, where they left her.
"There was not a man who, going home after this evening, did not feel in him the strength of ten Englishmen."[42]