Orleans. THIBAUT. God protect the king! BERTRAND. Artillery is brought from every side, And as the dusky squadrons of the bees Swarm round the hive upon a summer day, As clouds of locusts from the sultry air Descend and shroud the country round for miles, So doth the cloud of war, o'er Orleans' fields, Pour forth its many-nationed multitudes, Whose varied speech, in wild confusion blent, With strange and hollow murmurs fill the air. For Burgundy, the mighty potentate, Conducts his motley host; the Hennegarians, The men of Liege and of Luxemburg, The people of Namur, and those who dwell In fair Brabant; the wealthy men of Ghent,    Who boast their velvets, and their costly silks; The Zealanders, whose cleanly towns appear Emerging from the ocean; Hollanders Who milk the lowing herds; men from Utrecht, And even from West Friesland's distant realm, Who look towards the ice-pole—all combine, Beneath the banner of the powerful duke, Together to accomplish Orleans' fall. THIBAUT. Oh, the unblest, the lamentable strife, Which turns the arms of France against itself! BERTRAND. E'en she, the mother-queen, proud Isabel Bavaria's haughty princess—may be seen, Arrayed in armor, riding through the camp; With poisonous words of irony she fires The hostile troops to fury 'gainst her son, Whom she hath clasped to her maternal breast. THIBAUT. A curse upon her, and may God prepare For her a death like haughty Jezebel's! BERTRAND. The fearful Salisbury conducts the siege, The town-destroyer; with him Lionel, The brother of the lion; Talbot, too, Who, with his murd'rous weapon, moweth down The people in the battle: they have sworn, With ruthless insolence to doom to shame The hapless maidens, and to sacrifice All who the sword have wielded, with the sword. Four lofty watch-towers, to o'ertop the town, They have upreared; Earl Salisbury from on high Casteth abroad his cruel, murd'rous glance, And marks the rapid wanderers in the streets. Thousands of cannon-balls, of pond'rous weight, Are hurled into the city. Churches lie In ruined heaps, and Notre Dame's royal tower Begins at length to bow its lofty head. They also have formed powder-vaults below, And thus, above a subterranean hell, The timid city every hour expects,    'Midst crashing thunder, to break forth in flames.        [JOHANNA listens with close attention, and places the helmet on her head. THIBAUT. But where were then our heroes? Where the swords Of Saintrailles, and La Hire, and brave Dunois, Of France the bulwark, that the haughty foe With such impetuous force thus onward rushed? Where is 

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