e Calixtus III. gave order that
Jeanne's trial be revised. It was at best but cold and tardy gratitude
on Charles's part, this rehabilitation of the memory of the girl whom he
had used and then dropped when she was no longer serviceable; but we
must in justice say that he in every way furthered the investigation
into the facts of an episode in his life which he must have now regarded
with poignant regret and shame, more poignant as the glory of the lost
heroine was brought into full light. In this exhaustive inquiry into the
career of Jeanne d'Arc witnesses from far and near were examined and
documents rescued from oblivion, and at the end of the eight months'
proceedings the new court, with a mass of testimony before it which
fills volumes, reversed the partisan decision of the court of Rouen,
acquitted the heroine of the false charges brought against her, and not
only vindicated her honor, but pronounced favorably upon her claims to
sanctity. Jeanne was already canonized in popular imagination, and
though the official sanction of Rome was long in the granting, in the
hearts of all France she had a veneration far more precious than any
ever vouchsafed to a saint.

Jeanne d'Arc did not regard herself as a saint, nor was she free from
human faults of temper and of conduct that accord but ill with sanctity.
Her outbursts of wholesome wrath, some one or two of which we have
noted, mark her as that which she was, no patient martyr, but a strong,
healthy woman, normal in many things, and blessed with much practical
sense, in spite of her visions. It was this very fact in Jeanne's life
that enabled her enemies to seize upon the manifestations of her
likeness to other women of her class and time and to draw Jeanne as but
a common, coarse, immodest woman. In the disgusting Joan of
Shakespeare's _Henry VI._ (if it be his), and in the shameless wanton of
Voltaire's _Pucelle d'Orleans_ there is just this much of truth to life,
that the true Jeanne was a peasant lass and, in all things not directly
connected with her great deeds, spoke and acted as one of her class
would have acted and spoken, with far greater freedom than would be
consistent with modesty in a more cultured society. We do not mean to
say that there is the least justification or excuse for these attempts
to defame Jeanne d'Arc; to condemn her as a common virago because she
sometimes uttered her commands with too little regard for propriety in
speech would be like co