"And who is your Lord?" demanded Baudricourt. She answered, "The King of Heaven."
The governor, a rough and practical soldier, laughed at the young peasant in her coarse red dress, and bade her uncle chastise her well, and take her home to her father.
She returned to Domremy with her heart more than ever fixed on the work she had before her. Now and again she let fall words that revealed enough to make her parents anxious and fearful. Her father dreamed that she had gone away with the soldiers. "If I thought such a thing could happen," he said to her brothers, "I would bid you drown her, and if you refused, I would drown her myself." But she was of a marriageable age; why should she not marry, stay at home, and bring up children, like other women? A lover came forward, a bold one, who, when she rejected him, summoned her before the court at Toul, declaring that she had promised to be his wife. But she went before the judges, spoke out bravely, and defeated her persevering suitor.
As the months passed, her longing increased to be gone and do her voices' bidding. Once more she obtained her uncle's help. His wife was ill, and he came to Domremy and got leave for Joan to go back with him and nurse her. She went, keeping secret the real end of her journey. "If I had had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers," she said later, "and if I had been a king's daughter, I should have gone." She took leave of her companion Mengette, but to Haumette, her dearer friend, she would not trust herself to say farewell. Her uncle took her to Vaucouleurs, and gave her in charge of a wheelwright's wife, Catherine Royer, with whom she lived for some weeks. She went constantly to church, she helped her hostess in the house, and was gentle and obedient. At the same time, she spoke frankly of her mission to any who chose to hear.
She again went to the governor, who received her no better than before. But she was not cast down.
"I must go to the Dauphin," she said, "though I should go on my knees."
Many people went to see her, among others a brave gentleman of Metz, Jean de Novelonpont.
"What are you doing here, my child?" he asked her, jestingly. "Shall the King be driven out of France, and must we all turn English?"
"I am come to this royal city," she answered, "to bid Robert de Baudricourt take or send me to the King, but he does not heed my words; and yet before mid-Lent I must be before the King, though I should wear away my legs to the knees. For no one else in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, can recover the kingdom of France, and there is no help but in me. And, indeed, I would rather spin with my poor mother, for this is not my calling; but I must go and do it, for it is my Lord's will."
Like Baudricourt, the knight asked her: