s chief sources of information.--[The book
of Janet Tuckey, however, and ten others, including those mentioned, are
credited as "authorities examined in verification" on a front page of
his published book. In a letter written at the conclusion of "Joan" in
1895, the author states that in the first two-thirds of the story he
used one French and one English authority, while in the last third he
had constantly drawn from five French and five English sources.]

"I could not get the Quicherat and some of the other books in English,"
he said, "and I had to dig them out of the French. I began the story
five times."

None of these discarded beginnings exists to-day, but we may believe
they were wisely put aside, for no story of the Maid could begin more
charmingly, more rarely, than the one supposedly told in his old age by
Sieur Louis de Conte, secretary of Joan of Arc, and translated by
Jean Francois Alden for the world to read. The impulse which had once
prompted Mark Twain to offer The Prince and the Pauper anonymously now
prevailed. He felt that the Prince had missed a certain appreciation by
being connected with his signature, and he resolved that its companion
piece (he so regarded Joan) should be accepted on its merits and without
prejudice. Walking the floor one day at Viviani, smoking vigorously, he
said to Mrs. Clemens and Susy:

"I shall never be accepted seriously over my own signature. People
always want to laugh over what I write and are disappointed if they
don't find a joke in it. This is to be a serious book. It means more to
me than anything I have ever undertaken. I shall write it anonymously."

So it was that that gentle, quaint Sieur de Conte took up the pen, and
the tale of Joan was begun in that beautiful spot which of all others
seems now the proper environment for its lovely telling.

He wrote rapidly once he got his plan perfected and his material
arranged. The reading of his youth and manhood, with the vivid
impressions of that earlier time, became now something remembered, not
merely as reading, but as fact.

Others of the family went down into the city almost daily, but he
remained in that still garden with Joan as his companion--the old Sieur
de Conte, saturated with memories, pouring out that marvelous and tragic
tale. At the end of each day he would read to the others what he had
written, to their enjoyment and wonder.

How rapidly he worked may be judged from a letter which he wrote to H