true and loyal to
any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made
the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose--to a
splendor and a noonday prosperity both personal and public, that rang
through the records of his people, and became a by-word amongst his
posterity for a thousand years, until the scepter was departing from
Judah. The poor forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from
that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She never sang
together with them the songs that rose in her native Domremy, as
echoes to the departing step of invaders. She mingled not in the
festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the
redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent. No! for her
feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl! whom, from
earliest youth, ever I believed in as full of truth and self-sacrifice
this was amongst the strongest pledges for _thy_ side, that never
once--no, not for a moment of weakness--didst thou revel in the vision
of coronets and honors from man. Coronets for thee! Oh no! Honors, if
they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.
Daughter of Domremy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou
wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of France, but
she will not hear thee! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive
a robe of honor, but she will be found _en contumace_.

When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall
proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd-girl that gave up all for her
country--thy ear, young shepherd-girl, will have been deaf for five
centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; to
_do_--never for thyself, always for others; to _suffer_--never in the
persons of generous champions, always in thy own: that was thy destiny;
and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. "Life," thou saidst,
"is short, and the sleep which is in the grave is long. Let me use that
life, so transitory, for the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to
comfort the sleep which is so long." This poor creature--pure from every
suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in
senses more obvious--never once did this holy child, as regarded
herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was traveling to
meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death; she saw
not in vision, perhaps, the aerial altitude of