Duke Charles received his strange visitor somewhat reluctantly. He was a man of shrewd common-sense, intolerant of superstition, and impatient of feminine assumptions--as his consort, Duchess Marguerite, learnt to her undoing. He asked curtly about her home and her occult powers, and jokingly invoked her aid in the cure of gout, to which he was martyr, and from which he was then suffering acutely. “This,” said he, “shall be the test of your pretensions to save France. Remove my pain, and I will take you to the King.” Jeanne shed tears, and, straightening out her rough woolsey skirt, she looked sadly up to heaven. At last she spoke: “Take me not, noble Duke, for a common jongleuse. First of all, noble Duke, I implore you to become reconciled to the Duchess, your wife; as for me, I am the unworthy instrument of God to set King Charles of France upon his throne and to scatter his enemies.” The Duke dismissed the maid with a wave of his hand. “Take her away,” he said; “be kind to her; maybe I will see her again shortly.” “Jeanne,” he added, “in a day or two you shall tell your tale before some noble lords.”
All over Lorraine and Barrois internecine war was rife; noble rose against noble, and yeoman and peasant joined the fray. The most serious was the rivalry of René, the young Duke of Bar, and Antoine, Count of Vaudémont, concerning the rights of succession to the dukedom of Lorraine. Metz, into which de Vaudémont had thrown himself, was invested by the Barrois troops, splendidly led by the boy-warrior--he was but twenty years of age. A messenger from Charles requested a truce, and invited both commanders to join him at Nancy to take counsel with their peers upon the strange claims of a shepherd-girl from Domremy. With Duke René rode a score of knights and nobles; Count Antoine was accompanied by a like company. Upon the morrow of their arrival at the capital, Duke Charles assembled them and others in the great courtyard of the castle, and sent for Jeanne, who, still attired in her peasant garb, knelt at his feet and kissed his hand. Then she surveyed the assembly furtively, as though prepared for insult or worse, and quietly repeated her strange story amid general scoffs and impatience. One noble knight alone gave serious heed,--René, Duke of Bar. Duke Charles taunted her with her inability to mount a horse, much more to lead an army.
