he dead fact is nevertheless a
fruitful seed of thought, if we but allow it to come to germination. We
may recall that in the present day the most enthusiastic of those
patriots of France who are ever clamoring misguidedly for war are the
people of this one-time border of France. However misguided may be the
demonstrations of the crowds who annually drape in mourning the statue
of Strasbourg on the Place de la Concorde, an enthusiastic patriotism is
their inspiration. "The outposts of France, as one may call the great
frontier provinces," De Quincey says, "were of all localities the most
devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. To witness, at any great crisis, the
generous devotion to these lilies of the little fiery cousin (Lorraine)
that in gentler weather was forever tilting at the breast of France,
could not but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daughters; whilst to
occupy a post of honour on the frontiers against an old hereditary enemy
of France would naturally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial
pride, by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred always
smouldering.... The eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet
from the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning of
wheels, made the highroad itself, with its relations to centres so
remote, into a manual of patriotic duty."

Nursed in an atmosphere of patriotism, therefore, the little Jeanne had
the horrors of war brought vividly before her when a band of brigands,
nominally English or Burgundian partisans, rushed down upon Domremy,
sacked the town, burned the church, and drove many of the inhabitants,
including Jeanne's family, into temporary exile. The family came back
again, and the immediate ravages of the soldiers were repaired, but
Jeanne never forgot, and told in after years how she would shiver with
horror and then weep from sheer pity at seeing her village friends come
back wounded and bleeding from some affray with the English.

Jeanne, the daughter of one who is described as a _simple laboureur_
(which may mean that he was an independent farmer in a small way, not a
mere laborer), was born in 1412, and was therefore old enough to see and
to appreciate the worst of the miseries of France and to understand the
tales of war and of English outrages brought to her father's door by
many a traveller on the great highway that passed through Domremy; and
her heart was filled with pity for the poor dauphin, repudiated by his
o