l grace, in
these present letters, that the said Colin Pilon, and Jeanne, his wife,
each one of them, shall be and remain for life exempt and free from all
taxes that are and that may be in the future imposed and exacted in our
name throughout our kingdom, whether for the maintenance or keep of our
armies and soldiers or for any other cause whatsoever, and (they shall
also be exempt) from the duties of watch and ward, wheresoever in our
kingdom they may take up their abode. Given at Senlis, this 22nd day of
February, in the year of grace one thousand four hundred and
seventy-four."

It will be seen from this that Jeanne was already married, and that the
king himself had taken some sort of personal interest in her case,
supplying the very necessary _dot_ for the bride. She had not sought an
alliance out of her own class, for Colin Pilon was a simple man-at-arms,
who did not live long to enjoy either the love of his wife or the favor
of the king, for he fell at the siege of Nancy, in 1477. A few years
later, Jeanne married a cousin, one Fourquet, a soldier of fortune, at
one time in the personal guard of the king. Henceforth nothing more is
known of her, not even the date of her death. But popular fancy
associated her so intimately with the siege of Beauvais that, be her
real surname what it might, she was always Jeanne Hachette; and even in
the nineteenth century a certain Pierre Fourquet d'Hachette, claiming
descent from the humble heroine, received a pension from Charles X. In
Beauvais, too, her name and the memory of her good service were kept
alive not only by the annual parade on the festival of Saint Agadresme,
but also by a faded, ancient standard, borne by the young girls in the
procession, at other times carefully guarded among the treasures of the
city. It was a standard of white damasked cloth, bearing figures and
mottoes in gilt and colored paints. Even now one can decipher the
haughty device of Charles le temeraire: _Je l'ay emprins_ (I have
undertaken it), and beside it the emblems of the great order of the
Golden Fleece. It is the very standard that the girl snatched from the
Burgundian soldier more than four centuries ago.

The story of Jeanne Hachette is but an episode, of course; but in
reading it we should remember that, however small the part she played in
the great history of the world, she had one rare trait, a trait often
distinctive of the best figures in history, though not always of the
most n