First among these matrons were: the Queen of Sicily and of Jerusalem, Duchess of Anjou; Dame Jeanne de Preuilly, wife of the Sire de Gaucourt, Governor of Orleans, who was about fifty-seven years of age; and Dame Jeanne de Mortemer, wife of Messire Robert le Macon, Lord of Treves, a man full of years.[784] The last was only eighteen, and one would have expected her to be better acquainted with the _Calendrier des Vieillards_ than with the formulary of matrons.

It is strange with what assurance the good wives of those days undertook the solution of a problem which had appeared difficult to King Solomon in all his wisdom.
[Footnote 784: _Trial_, vol.iii, p.102.Vallet de Viriville, article _Le Macon_, in _Nouvelle biographie generale_.] Jeanne of Domremy was found to be a maid pure and intact.[785] [Footnote 785: _Trial_, vol.iii, p.210.Eberhard Windecke, p.

157.
Morosini, p.

99.] While she herself was being subjected to the interrogatories of doctors and the examination of matrons, certain clerics who had been despatched to her native province were there prosecuting an inquiry concerning her birth, her life, and her morals.[786] The ecclesiastics had been chosen from those mendicant Friars[787] who could pass freely along the highways and byways of the enemy's country without exciting the suspicion of English and Burgundians.

And, indeed, they were in no way molested.