446.] [Footnote 654: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.i, p.

173.] He always had two or three astrologers at court.

These almanac makers drew up schemes of nativity, cast horoscopes and read in the sky the approach of wars and revolutions.

One of them, Maitre Rolland the Scrivener, a fellow of the University of Paris, was one night, at a certain hour, observing the heavens from his roof, when he saw the apex of Virgo in the ascendant, Venus, Mercury, and the sun half way up the sky.[655] This his colleague, Guillaume Barbin of Geneva, interpreted to mean that the English would be driven from France and the King restored by the hand of a mere maid.[656] If we may believe the Inquisitor Brehal, some time before Jeanne's coming into France, a clever astronomer of Seville, Jean de Montalcin by name, had written to the King among other things the following words: "By a virgin's counsel thou shalt be victorious.

Continue in triumph to the gates of Paris."[657] [Footnote 655: I here correct the text of Simon de Phares (_Trial_, vol.iv, p.