But she did not know herself; she did not know that her Voices were the cries of her own heart, and that she longed to quit the distaff for the sword.
Jean de Metz asked, as Sire Robert had done: "Who is Messire ?" "He is God," she replied.
Then straightway, as if he believed in her, he said with a sudden impulse: "I promise you, and I give you my word of honour, that God helping me I will take you to the King." He gave her his hand as a sign that he pledged his word and asked: "When will you set forth ?" "This hour," she answered, "is better than to-morrow; to-morrow is better than after to-morrow." Jean de Metz himself, twenty-seven years later, reported this conversation.[405] If we are to believe him, he asked the damsel in conclusion whether she would travel in her woman's garb.

It is easy to imagine what difficulties he would foresee in journeying with a peasant girl clad in a red frock over French roads infested with lecherous fellows, and that he would deem it wiser for her to disguise herself as a boy.

She promptly divined his thought and replied: "I will willingly dress as a man."[406] [Footnote 405: _Trial_, vol.ii, p.

436.] [Footnote 406: _Ibid._, p.

436, 437.] There is no reason why these things should not have occurred.