ructible nationality stirred in their
hearts and told them that France could not die. Hoping nothing from
earth, they lifted their souls to heaven; an ardent religious fervor
seized upon them, which had no part with clergy or creed. It rose from
the extremity of their need, and fixed its root in an old oracle of the
Middle Ages, which had predicted that France should be 'lost through a
woman and saved by a virgin.'"

France had certainly been lost through its wicked queen; that part of
the old prophecy had been fearfully fulfilled; the remaining clause was
yet to be verified. The people, excited to a religious frenzy by their
desperate straits and their faith in the old superstition, prayed more
fervently with each day; and their prayers rose like great white eagles
and settled upon the heart of that strange divine child, who was weeping
over the fate of France while she watched her sheep on the plains of
Domremy.

A humbly born girl was Joan of Arc, unable to read or write; women who
could do more than that were rare in those days, so she was not despised
on account of her ignorance, but highly respected for her industry and
piety. An enthusiastic Catholic, she added to her church duties by
active benevolence and kindness to the sick and poor in her native town.
Often she was seen to kneel in the fields and pray; and there was a
chapel some miles from Domremy to which she used to make a pilgrimage
every Sunday and offer prayers to the Virgin. There was, too, in the
forest of Bois Chemin a famous beech-tree under which a stream of clear
water flowed; and a superstition prevailed among the people of Domremy
that fairies had blessed this tree and bestowed healing properties upon
the waters of the stream. The priest and the villagers marched about the
sacred tree once each year singing solemn chants, and the young people
hung its boughs with garlands, and danced under its shading branches.
Joan dearly loved this spot, and it became her favorite haunt. The
echoes of war reverberated even to this quiet frontier hamlet, and in
her hours of reverie she dwelt sadly upon the stories of bloodshed and
suffering which she heard her elders repeat.

She was twelve years old when the dauphin was proclaimed king by his few
followers; and in all his flight from province to province, fleeing
before the usurpers of his throne, no heart in all France suffered more
keenly than the heart beating in the breast of this humble shepherd
girl.