"Well, my lass," said he, "is our king to be driven from France, and are we all to become English?"
"I have come here," said Joan, "to bid Robert de Baudricourt lead me to the king, but he will not listen to me. And yet to the king I must go, even if I walk my legs down to the knees; for none in all the world—king, nor duke, nor the King of Scotland's daughter—can save France, but myself only. Certainly, I would rather stay and spin with my poor mother, for to fight is not my calling; but I must go and I must fight, for so my Lord will have it."
"And who is your Lord?" said Jean de Nouillompont.
"He is God," said the Maiden.
On February 12, the story goes, she went to Robert de Baudricourt. "You delay too long," she said. "On this very day, at Orleans, the gentle Dauphin has lost a battle."
Now the people of Vaucouleurs brought clothes for Joan to wear on her journey to the Dauphin. They were such clothes as men wear—doublet, hose, surcoat, boots, and spurs—and Robert de Baudricourt gave Joan a sword. Her reason was that she would have to be living alone among men-at-arms for a ten days' journey and she thought it was more modest to wear armor like the rest. Also, her favorite saint, St. Margaret, had done this once when in danger. Besides, in all the romances of chivalry, we find fair maidens fighting in arms like men, or travelling dressed as pages.
On February 23, 1429, the gate of the little castle of Vaucouleurs, "the Gate of France," which is still standing, was thrown open. Seven travellers rode out, among them two squires, Jean de Nouillompont and Bertrand de Poulengy, with their attendants, and Joan the Maid. "Go, and let what will come of it come!" said Robert de Baudricourt. He did not expect much to come of it. It was a long journey—they were eleven days on the road—and a dangerous. But Joan laughed at danger. "God will clear my path to the king, for to this end I was born." Often they rode by night, stopping at monasteries when they could, Sometimes they slept out under the sky. Though she was young and beautiful, these two gentlemen never dreamed of paying their court to her and making love, as they do in romances, for they regarded her "as if she had been an angel." They were in awe of her, they said long afterward, and all the knights who had seen her said the same.
From Fierbois, Joan made some clerk write to the king that she was coming to help him, and that she would know him among all his men. Probably it was here that she wrote to beg her parents pardon, and they forgave her, she says. Meanwhile, news reached the people then besieged in Orleans that a marvellous Maiden was riding to their rescue. On March 6, Joan arrived in Chinon where for two or three days the king's advisers would not let him see her. At last they yielded, and she went straight up to him, and when he denied that he was the king, she told him that she knew well who he was.
"There is the king," said Charles, pointing to a richly dressed noble.
"No, fair sire. You are he!"