173.] While they were refreshing themselves, she asked for her horse and mounted it.

Then, leaving her standard with a man of her company, she went alone up the hill into the vineyards, which it had been impossible to till this April, but where the tiny spring leaves were beginning to open.

There, in the calm of evening, among the vine props tied together in sheaves and the lines of low vines drinking in the early warmth of the earth, she began to pray and listened for her heavenly voices.[1081] Too often tumult and noise prevented her from hearing what her angel and her saints had to say to her.

She could only understand them well in solitude or when the bells were tinkling in the distance, and evening sounds soft and rhythmic were ascending from field and meadow.[1082] [Footnote 1081: _Trial_, vol.iii, p.

8 (evidence of Dunois).