nave of the church, beneath
the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of
the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's
sermon.[178]

[Footnote 177: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 178: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 402. See in Montfaucon's
_Monuments de la Monarchie Francaise_, vol. iii, the second miniature,
the "Douze perils d'enfer" (the twelve perils of hell).]

As soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding,
digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a
man.[179]

[Footnote 179: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 409, 415, 420.]

The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on
the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to
his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right
to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. Each
family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows.
Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out
his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch
them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into
the meadow, distaff in hand.[180]

[Footnote 180: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 51, 66; vol. ii, p. 404. S. Luce,
_Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. lij.]

But she would rather do housework or sew or spin. She was pious. She
swore neither by God nor his saints; and to assert the truth of
anything she was content to say: "There's no mistake."[181] When the
bells rang for the _Angelus_, she crossed herself and knelt.[182] On
Saturday, the Holy Virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with
grass, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of Greux nestling at
its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the
east the green valley and the blue hills. On the brow of the hill,
barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of
murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth
the clear waters of the Saint-Thiebault spring, which cure fevers and
heal wounds. Above the spring rises the chapel of Notre-Dame de
Bermont. In fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and
woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and
silence. In those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown,
with her divine child in her arms, Notre-Dame de Bermont received the
prayers and the offerings of young men and mai