wn mother, exiled from his kingdom by the English, wandering aimlessly
from province to province where the arms of his enemies made it safe for
him to pass. The child's mind could but be stirred and filled with those
vague, generous dreams of sacrifice, of heroism, of impossible
achievements, which, like other visions, fade "into the light of common
day" with most of us. Not so with Jeanne, in whom from the start there
was something mystical, something that set her apart from other
children.

With her work-a-day life we are not concerned, nor with those members of
her family who stand for none of the things of the spirit for which she
was to serve. Her father, of whom even tradition has been able to make
neither a monster nor a hero, was merely a commonplace peasant,
apparently amiable and kindly, but manifestly incapable of sympathy with
things ethereal and supernatural; we need not go so far as De Quincey
and deny him patriotism: "He would greatly have preferred... the saving
of a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France." And so
with her brothers, Jean and Pierre; though ennobled by the king, and
though doubtless very good fellows, they were certainly very far from
being noble in spirit, or in any way comparable to their sister. For
Jeanne's nobility was based upon no accident of birth or favor of a
prince: it was the gift of God.

The life of Jeanne d'Arc was probably not essentially different from
that of other girls of her class, at least up to her fourteenth or
fifteenth year. From the testimony of those who recalled the childhood
of the heroine long after she had become a heroine we must turn with
some distrust; for motives the most diverse may have induced, and
doubtless did induce, them to conceal or even to misrepresent many
things in this simple story. But there seems to be no doubt that Jeanne
tended sheep, like her sister and other children of the neighborhood,
that she learned all the simple little domestic arts, and "was a good
girl, diligent at her work"; she herself refers with pride to her skill
as a needlewoman: "My mother taught me so well that I could sew as well
as any woman in Rouen," and Rouen was one of the centres of fine work;
but of reading and writing, even the rudiments of education, she knew
nothing. Of one other thing, too, there is no doubt, though the
legend-mongers have doubtless colored the picture a little here also;
this is that the child was pious, manifesting great