Jeanne dArc | Page 9

a devotee of these nameless woodland
spirits, but in vain. No doubt she was one of the procession on the holy
day once a year, when the curé of the parish went out through the wood
to the Fairies' Well to say his mass, and exorcise what evil enchantment
might be there. But Jeanne's imagination was not of the kind to require
such stimulus. The saints were enough for her; and indeed they
supplied to a great extent the fairy tales of the age, though it was not of
love and fame and living happy ever after, but of sacrifice and suffering
and valorous martyrdom that their glory was made up.
We hear of the woods, the fields, the cottages, the little church and its
bells, the garden where she sat and sewed, the mother's stories, the
morning mass, in this quiet preface of the little maiden's life; but
nothing of the highroad with its wayfarers, the convoys of provisions
for the war, the fighting men that were coming and going. Yet these,
too, must have filled a large part in the village life, and it is evident that
a strong impression of the pity of it all, of the distraction of the country
and all the cruelties and miseries of which she could not but hear, must
have early begun to work in Jeanne's being, and that while she kept
silence the fire burned in her heart. The love of God, and that love of
country which has nothing to say to political patriotism but translates
itself in an ardent longing and desire to do "some excelling thing" for
the benefit and glory of that country, and to heal its wounds--were the
two principles of her life. We have not the slightest indication how
much or how little of this latter sentiment was shared by the simple
community about her; unless from the fact that the Domremy children
fought with those of Maxey, their disaffected neighbours, to the
occasional effusion of blood. We do not know even of any volunteer
from the village, or enthusiasm for the King.[3] The district was
voiceless, the little clusters of cottages fully occupied in getting their
own bread, and probably like most other village societies, disposed to
treat any military impulse among their sons as mere vagabondism and
love of adventure and idleness.

Nothing, so far as anyone knows, came near the most unlikely
volunteer of all, to lead her thoughts to that art of war of which she
knew nothing, and of which her little experience could only have
shown her the horrors and miseries, the sufferings of wounded fugitives
and the ruin of sacked houses. Of all people in the world, the little
daughter of a peasant was the last who could have been expected to
respond to the appeal of the wretched country. She had three brothers
who might have served the King, and there was no doubt many a stout
clodhopper about, of that kind which in every country is the fittest
material for fighting, and "food for powder." But to none of these did
the call come. Every detail goes to increase the profound impression of
peacefulness which fills the atmosphere--the slow river floating by, the
roofs clustered together, the church bells tinkling their continual
summons, the girl with her work at the cottage door in the shadow of
the apple trees. To pack the little knapsack of a brother or a lover, and
to convoy him weeping a little way on his road to the army, coming
back to the silent church to pray there, with the soft natural tears which
the uses of common life must soon dry--that is all that imagination
could have demanded of Jeanne. She was even too young for any
interposition of the lover, too undeveloped, the French historians tell us
with their astonishing frankness, to the end of her short life, to have
been moved by any such thought. She might have poured forth a song,
a prayer, a rude but sweet lament for her country, out of the still bosom
of that rustic existence. Such things have been, the trouble of the age
forcing an utterance from the very depths of its inarticulate life. But it
was not for this that Jeanne d'Arc was born. ---------- [1] Mr. Andrew
Lang informs me that the real proprietor was a certain "Dame
d'Orgévillier." "On Jeanne's side of the burn," he adds, with a
picturesque touch of realism, "the people were probably /free/ as
attached to the Royal Châtellenie of Vancouleurs, as described below."
[2] This was probably not the God-dam of later French, a reflection of
the supposed prevalent English oath, but most likely merely the
God-den or good-day, the common salutation.
[3] Domremy was split, Mr. Lang says, by the burn, and