Yet the only reproach they bring against Charles VII and his councillors is that they did not understand the Maid as they themselves understood her.

But such an understanding has required the lapse of four hundred years.

To arrive at the illuminated ideas of a Quicherat and a Henri Martin concerning Jeanne d'Arc, three centuries of absolute monarchy, the Reformation, the Revolution, the wars of the Republic and of the Empire, and the sentimental Neo-Catholicism of '48, have all been necessary.

Through all these brilliant prisms, through all these succeeding lights do romantic historians and broad-minded paleographers view the figure of Jeanne d'Arc; and we ask too much from the poor Dauphin Charles, from La Tremouille, from Regnault de Chartres, from the Lord of Treves, from old Gaucourt, when we require them to have seen Jeanne as centuries have made and moulded her.[105] [Footnote 105: H.Martin, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1856, in 12mo; J.
Quicherat, _Nouvelles preuves des trahisons essuyees par la Pucelle_ in _Revue de Normandie_, vol.vi (1866), pp.

396-401.] This, however, remains: after having made so much use of her, the Royal Council did nothing to save her.
Must the disgrace of such neglect fall upon the whole Council and upon the Council alone?
Who ought really to have interfered?
And how?
What ought King Charles to have done?
Should he have offered to ransom the Maid?
She would not have been surrendered to him at any price.