“Naught! You shall tell me naught,” cried Jacques almost beside himself with rage. “Go to your room, and stay there for the rest of the day. And hark ye all!” including his wife and sons in a wide sweeping gesture, “wherever Jeanne goes one of you must be with her. See to it. At any time she may go off with some roaming band of Free Lances. Rather than have that happen I would rather she were dead.” He turned upon 110 Lassois fiercely as Jeanne, weeping bitterly at his harsh words, obediently withdrew into her own little room.
“And you, Lassois! why did you not keep her from going to Vaucouleurs? You knew that I would not like it. You knew also that it would cause talk. Why, why did you permit it?”
“Aye, I knew all that, Jacques,” responded Lassois, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other. “But Jeanne really believed that she had received a divine command to go to Sire Robert. So believing, she would have gone to him in spite of all that I could have done. Therefore, was it not better that I should take her?”
“Durand speaks truly, Jacques,” spoke Isabeau. “The child is clearly daft. I have heard that such are always set in their fancies. What is past, is past. She has been to Vaucouleurs; therefore, it can not be undone. What remains to be done is to guard against any future wanderings.” The mother was as greatly distressed as the father, but out of sympathy for his woe she forced herself to speak of the occurrence with calmness.
“True,” muttered Jacques. “True. No doubt you could not do other than you did, Durand; but I wonder that you did it.”
“Jeanne does not seem out of her senses to me,” observed Lassois. “There is a saying, as you well know, that a maid from the Bois Chesnu shall redeem France. It might be she as well as another. She is holy enough.”
“Pouf!” Jacques snapped his fingers derisively. “It is as Isabeau says: she has heard too much of the state of the 111 realm, and of the wonderful Maid who is to restore it. The country is full of the talk. It could not mean her. She is but a peasant girl, and when hath a villein’s daughter ever ridden a horse, or couched a lance? Let her keep to her station. Don’t let such wild talk addle your wits, too, Durand. Now tell me everything that occurred at Vaucouleurs. The village rings with the affair. I want the whole truth.”
Lassois did as requested, and told all of the happening. Finding the girl’s parents so incredulous concerning her mission had somewhat shaken his belief in his niece, but the germ that remained caused him to soften the narrative a little. Jacques heard him through in silence. When Durand had finished the telling he bowed his head upon his arms as though the recital were beyond his strength to bear.
He was an upright man, just and honorable in his dealings with others. He stood well in the village, being esteemed next to the mayor himself. He was fond of his children, and had looked after their upbringing strictly. He wanted nothing out of the ordinary, nothing unusual, nothing but what was conventional and right to occur among them. He did not believe that his daughter had received a divine command. He did not know of her Heavenly visitants, nor would he have believed in them had he known. He thought that someway, somehow, she had become imbued with a wild fancy to be among men-at-arms; that, in consequence, she might become a worthless creature. The mere idea was agony. After a time he raised his head to ask brokenly,
“She told the Sire Captain that she would come again, Durand?”