f bishops, archbishops, and all the ranks
of priesthood. The ceremony of adding one more to the calendar of the
Blessed was performed, a solemn "Te Deum" was sung in praise of God's
eternal greatness, and Pontifical Mass was celebrated, with all the
splendour of ancient ritual and music of the grandest harmony. In the
afternoon Christ's Vicar himself entered from his palace, attended by
fifteen cardinals, seventy of the archbishops and bishops of France,
with an equal number of their rank from elsewhere, and, amid the
gleaming lights of scarlet and gold, of green and violet, of jewels and
holy flames, he prostrated himself before the figure of the Blessed One,
to whom effectual prayer might now be offered even by the Head of the
Church militant here on earth. Till late at night the vast cathedral was
crowded with increasing multitudes assembled for the honour of one whom
the Church which judges securely as the world, commanded them to revere.

It was a simple peasant girl--"just the simplest peasant you could ever
see"--whom the Head of the Church thus worshipped and crowds delighted
to honour. Short and deep-chested she was, capable of a man's endurance,
and with black hair cut like a boy's. She could not write or read, was
so ignorant as to astonish ladies, and had only the peasant arts. The
earliest description tells of her "common red frock carefully patched."
"I could beat any woman in Rouen at spinning and stitching," she said to
her judges, who, to be sure, had no special knowledge of anything beyond
theology. "I'm only a poor girl, and can't ride or fight," she said when
first she conceived her mission, and she had just the common instincts
of the working woman. We may suppose her fond of children, for wherever
she went she held the newborn babies at the font. She hated death and
cruelty. "The sight of French blood," she said, "always makes my hair
stand on end," and even to the enemy she always offered peace. "Or, if
you want to fight," she sent a message to the Duke of Burgundy, "you
might go and fight the Saracens." She never killed anyone, she said at
her trial. Just an ordinary peasant girl she seemed--"la plus simple
bergerette qu'on veit onques"--with no apparent distinction but a sweet
and attractive voice. To be sure, she could put that sweet voice to
shrewd use when she pleased. "What tongue do your Visions speak?" a
theologian kept asking her. "A better tongue than yours!" she answered
with the retort