Jeanne dArc | Page 7

ancient connection with Rheims may have brought the great ceremony
for which it is ever memorable, the consecration of the kings of France,
more distinctly before the musing vision of the village girl; but I doubt
whether such chance associations are ever much to be relied upon. The
village was on the high-road to Germany; it must have been therefore
in the way of news, and of many rumours of what was going on in the
centres of national life, more than many towns of importance. Feudal
bands, a rustic Seigneur with his little troop, going out for their forty
days' service, or returning home after it, must have passed along the
banks of the lazy Meuse many days during the fighting season, and
indeed throughout the year, for garrison duty would be as necessary in
winter as in summer; or a wandering pair of friars who had seen strange
sights must have passed with their wallets from the neighbouring
convents, collecting the day's provision, and leaving news and gossip
behind, such as flowed to these monastic hostelries from all
quarters--tales of battles, and anecdotes of the Court, and dreadful
stories of English atrocities, to stir the village and rouse ever generous
sentiment and stirring of national indignation. They are said by
Michelet to have been no man's vassals, these outlying hamlets of
Champagne; the men were not called upon to follow their lord's banner
at a day's notice, as were the sons of other villages. There is no
appearance even of a lord at all upon this piece of Church land, which

was, we are told, directly held under the King, and would only
therefore be touched by a general levy /en masse/--not even perhaps by
that, so far off were they, and so near the frontier, where a reluctant
man-at-arms could without difficulty make his escape, as the unwilling
conscript sometimes does now.
There would seem to have been no one of more importance in
Domremy than Jacques d'Arc himself and his wife, respectable
peasants, with a little money, a considerable rural property in flocks
and herds and pastures, and a good reputation among their kind. He had
three sons working with their father in the peaceful routine of the fields;
and two daughters, of whom some authorities indicate Jeanne as the
younger, and some as the elder. The cottage interior, however, appears
more clearly to us than the outward aspect of the family life. The
daughters were not, like the children of poorer peasants, brought up to
the rude outdoor labours of the little farm. Painters have represented
Jeanne as keeping her father's sheep, and even the early witnesses say
the same; but it is contradicted by herself, who ought to know
best--(except in taking her turn to herd them into a place of safety on an
alarm). If she followed the flocks to the fields, it must have been, she
says, in her childhood, and she has no recollection of it. Hers was a
more sheltered and safer lot. The girls were brought up by their mother
indoors in all the labours of housewifery, but also in the delicate art of
needlework, so much more exquisite in those days than now. Perhaps
Isabeau, the mistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps
some ancient privilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for
the altar, and church vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what
had been Church lands. At all events this, and other kindred works of
the needle, seems to have been the chief occupation to which Jeanne
was brought up.
The education of this humble house seems to have come entirely from
the mother. It was natural that the children should not know A from B,
as Jeanne afterward said; but no one did, probably, in the village nor
even on much higher levels than that occupied by the family of Jacques
d'Arc. But the children at their mother's knee learned the Credo, they
learned the simple universal prayers which are common to the wisest

and simplest, which no great savant or poet could improve, and no
child fail to understand: "Our Father, which art in Heaven," and that
"Hail, Mary, full of grace," which the world in that day put next. These
were the alphabet of life to the little Champagnards in their rough
woollen frocks and clattering sabots; and when the house had been set
in order,--a house not without comfort, with its big wooden presses full
of linen, and the /pot au feu/ hung over the cheerful fire,--came the real
work, perhaps embroideries for the Church, perhaps only good stout
shirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the boys,
and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women. "Asked if she
had