"What make we now ?" I asked of Barthelemy Barrette, one day, after the companies had scattered, as I have said, and we had gone back into Compiegne.

"What stroke may France now strike for the Maid ?" He hung his head and plucked at his beard, ere he spoke.
"To be as plain with you as my heart is with myself, Norman," he answered at last, "deliverance, or hope of deliverance, see I none.

The English have the bird in the cage, and Rouen is not a strength that can be taken by sudden onslaught.

And, were it so, where is our force, in midwinter?
I rather put my faith, that can scarce move mountains, in some subtle means, if any man might devise them." "We cannot sit idle here," I said.

"And for three long months there will be no moving of armies in open field." "And in three months these dogs of false French doctors of Paris will have tried and condemned the Maid.