alice, with a score of cottages grouped around.
These were situated in the county of Champagne, under the suzerainty
of the Count de Bar.

The northern side of the village, containing the church, belonged to
the Manor of Vaucouleurs. In this part of the village, in a cottage
built between the church and the rivulet close by, Joan of Arc was
born, on or about the 6th of January, 1412. The house which now exists
on the site of her birthplace was built in 1481, but the little
streamlet still takes its course at its foot. Michelet, in his account
of the heroine, says the station in life of Joan's father was that of
a labourer; later investigations have proved that he was what we
should call a small farmer. In the course of the trial held for the
rehabilitation of Joan of Arc's memory, which yields valuable and
authentic information relating to her family as well as to her life
and actions, it appears that the neighbours of the heroine deposed
that her parents were well-to-do agriculturists, holding a small
property besides this house at Domremy; they held about twenty acres
of land, twelve of which were arable, four meadow-land, and four for
fuel. Besides this they had some two to three hundred francs kept safe
in case of emergency, and the furniture goods and chattels of their
modest home. The money thus kept in case of sudden trouble came in
usefully when the family had to escape from the English to
Neufchateau. All told, the fortune of the family of Joan attained an
annual income of about two hundred pounds of our money, a not
inconsiderable revenue at that time; and with it they were enabled to
raise a family in comfort, and to give alms and hospitality to the
poor, and wandering friars and other needy wayfarers, then so common
in the land.

Two documents lately discovered prove Joan's father to have held a
position of some importance at Domremy. In the one, dated 1423, he is
styled '_doyen_' (senior inhabitant) of the village, which gave him
rank next to the Mayor. In the other, four years later, he fills a post
which tallies with what is called in Scotland the Procurator-fiscal.

The name of the family was Arc, and much ink has been shed as to the
origin of that name. By some it is derived from the village of d'Arc,
in the Barrois, now in the department of the Haute Marne; and this
hypothesis is as good as any other.

Jacques d'Arc had taken to wife one Isabeau Romee, from the village of
Vouthon, near Domremy. Is