g back to Italy to seek a more favorable
field for their peaceful talents, and the mother remaining in seclusion
for eleven years.

It was probably not long before her death, of which we do not know the
precise date, that the good lady heard in her cloister the glad news of
the coming of the Maid of Orleans and of the consecration of the king at
Rheims. All her love for her dear land of France welled up in her heart,
and in gladness and wonder she sang the _Dittie de Jeanne d'Arc_, the
praise of this "girl of sixteen years... before whom enemies fly, not
one dare stand.... Oh! what honor to our sex! our sex, that God loves,
it would seem." We cannot better conclude this account of a pure and
noble woman--of one who loved her husband, her children and her country,
and who, above all, preserved respect for herself and for her womanhood
in an evil age--than in the words of her triumphant song of joy which
proclaims that France is saved, and that it is a woman who saves France:

"Chose est bien digne de memoire
Que Dieu par une vierge tendre
Sur France si grand' grace estendre.
Tu Johanne, de bonne heure nee,
Benoist (Beni) soit (le) Ciel qui te crea,
Par miracle fut (elle) envoyee
Au roi pour sa provision;
Son fait n'est pas illusion,
Car bien a ete eprouvee....
Par conseil en conclusion
A l'effet la chose est prouvee,
Et sa belle vie, par (ma) foi,
Par quoi (laquelle) on ajoute plus (de) foi
A son fait, quoi qu'elle fasse,
Toujours en Dieu devant la face....
Hee! quel honneur au feminin
Sexe! que Dieu l'aime, il appert!"

CHAPTER XII

THE SAVIOR OF FRANCE

_Cettelle ne vient pas de la terre; elle est envoyee du ciel._ Thus it
is that a contemporary, a great politician and satirist, Alain Chartier,
expresses his convictions regarding the Maid of Orleans. To Christine de
Pisan, too, she seemed, as we have seen, a messenger from God. It was a
time when all good patriots wept, when the fair land of France was a
prey to the spoiler, when Armagnac, Bourguignon, and hated Saxon roamed
at will over the land and laid it waste. In one of Alain Chartier's
political satires, _Le Quadriloge invectif_, the three estates of the
realm nobles, clergy, commons are in turn appealed to by La France, to
"have pity of their common mother." The commons, or _Peuple_, replies:
"It is the labor o