boys,
and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women. "Asked if
she had learned any art or trade, said: Yes, that her mother had taught
her to sew and spin, and so well, that she did not think any woman in
Rouen could teach her anything." When the lady in the ballad makes her
conditions with the peasant woman who is to bring up her boy, her "gay
goss hawk," and have him trained in the use of sword and lance, she
undertakes to teach the "turtle-doo," the woman child substituted for
him, "to lay gold with her hand." No doubt Isabeau's child learned
this difficult and dainty art, and how to do the beautiful and delicate
embroidery which fills the treasuries of the old churches.

And while they sat by the table in the window, with their shining silks
and gold thread, the mother made the quiet hours go by with tale and
legend--of the saints first of all--and stories from Scripture, quaintly
interpreted into the costume and manners of their own time, as one
may still hear them in the primitive corners of Italy: mingled with
incidents of the war, of the wounded man tended in the village, and the
victors all flushed with triumph, and the defeated with trailing arms
and bowed heads, riding for their lives: perhaps little epics and
tragedies of the young knight riding by to do his devoir with his
handful of followers all spruce and gay, and the battered and diminished
remnant that would come back. And then the Black Burgundians, the
horrible English ogres, whose names would make the children shudder! No
_God-den_(2) had got so far as Domremy; there was no personal knowledge
to soften the picture of the invader. He was unspeakable as the Turk to
the imagination of the French peasant, diabolical as every invader is.

This was the earliest training of the little maid before whom so strange
and so great a fortune lay. _Autre personne que sadite mere ne lui
apprint_--any lore whatsoever; and she so little--yet everything that
was wanted--her prayers, her belief, the happiness of serving God, and
also man; for when any one was sick in the village, either a little
child with the measles, or a wounded soldier from the wars, Isabeau's
modest child--no doubt the mother too--was always ready to help. It
must have been a family _de bien_, in the simple phrase of the country,
helpful, serviceable, with charity and aid for all. An honest labourer,
who came to speak for Jeanne at the second trial, held long after her
death, gave hi