Try to love me instead, and comfort my heart, for sometimes I am very, very weary, and hungry for the love that I have lost!" Now, one might have thought that so young a child--for she was not more than eight years old, and small for her years--would have been affrighted at the sudden approach of the shining warrior, about whom so many stories had been told, and who looked more like the Archangel Michael, as many thought, than a creature of human flesh and blood.

But instead of showing any fear, the child flung her arms about the neck of the Maid, and pressed kisses upon her face--her headpiece she had removed at her entrance--and when the mother would have loosened her hold, and sent the child away with her attendant, little Charlotte resisted, clinging to her new friend with all her baby strength, and the Maid looked pleadingly up into the kindly face of the lady, and said: "Ah, madame, I pray you let her remain with me.

It is so long since I felt the arms of a child about my neck!" And so the little one stayed to the banquet, and was given the place of honour beside the Maid.

But neither of these twain had any relish for the dainty meats and rich dishes served for us.

As on the march, so now in the walls of the city, the Maid fared as simply as the rudest of her soldiers.