, and Lemaitre, the Deputy Inquisitor--with other persons
chiefly concerned in the judgment. Some of these men were dead, some,
wisely, not to be found. The result was such a mass of testimony as put
every incident of the life of the Maid in the fullest light from her
childhood to her death, and in consequence secured a triumphant and full
acquittal of herself and her name from every reproach. This remarkable
and indeed unique occurrence does not seem, however, to have roused
any enthusiasm. Perhaps France felt herself too guilty: perhaps the
extraordinary calm of contemporary opinion which was still too near the
catastrophe to see it fully: perhaps that difficulty in the diffusion of
news which hindered the common knowledge of a trial--a thing too heavy
to be blown upon the winds,--while it promulgated the legend, a thing
so much more light to carry: may be the cause of this. But it is an
extraordinary fact that Jeanne's name remained in abeyance for many
ages, and that only in this century has it come to any sort of glory,
in the country of which Jeanne is the first and greatest of patriots
and champions, a country, too, to which national glory is more dear than
daily bread.

In the new and wonderful spring of life that succeeded the revolution
of 1830, the martyr of the fifteenth century came to light as by a
revelation. The episode of the Pucelle in Michelet's _History of France_
touched the heart of the world, and remains one of the finest efforts of
history and the most popular picture of the saint. And perhaps, though
so much less important in point of art, the maiden work of another
maiden of Orleans--the little statue of Jeanne, so pure, so simple, so
spiritual, made by the Princess Marie of that house, the daughter of the
race which the Maid held in visionary love, and which thus only has ever
attempted any return of that devotion--had its part in reawakening
her name and memory. It fell again, however, after the great work of
Quicherat had finally given to the country the means of fully
forming its opinion on the subject which Fabre's translation, though
unfortunately not literal and adorned with modern decorations, was
calculated to render popular. A great crop of statues and some pictures
not of any great artistic merit have since been dedicated to the memory
of the Maid: but yet the public enthusiasm has never risen above the
tide mark of literary applause.

There has been, however, a great movement of en