ice, snow–Paris had all these at once. The dead lay in heaps about
the streets, and wolves entered the city in daylight and devoured
them.
Ah, France had fallen low–so low! For more than three quarters of
a century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so
cowed had her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it
was said and accepted that the mere sight of an English army was
sufficient to put a French one to flight.
When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell
upon France; and although the English King went home to enjoy
his glory, he left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands
of Free Companions in the service of the Burgundian party, and
one of these bands came raiding through Neufchateau one night,
and by the light of our burning roof-thatch I saw all that were dear
to me in this world (save an elder brother, your ancestor, left
behind with the court) butchered while they begged for mercy, and
heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and mimic their
pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When the
savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching
the burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of
the dead and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden
themselves.
I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose housekeeper became a
loving mother to me. The priest, in the course of time, taught me
to read and write, and he and I were the only persons in the village
who possessed this learning.
At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte,
became my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the
village church, and the small garden of Joan’s parents was behind
the church. As to that family there were Jacques d’Arc the father,
his wife Isabel Romee; three sons–Jacques, ten years old, Pierre,
eight, and Jean, seven; Joan, four, and her baby sister Catherine,
about a year old. I had these children for playmates from the
beginning. I had some other playmates besides–particularly four
boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, No‰l Rainguesson, and Edmond
Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time; also two girls, about
Joan’s age, who by and by became her favorites; one was named
Haumetter, the other was called Little Mengette. These girls were
common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew up,
both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough,
you see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing
stranger, howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his
reverence to those to humble old women who had been honored in
their youth by the friendship of Joan of Arc.
These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not
bright, of course–you would not expect that–but good-hearted and
companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as
they grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and
prejudices got at second hand from their elders, and adopted
without reserve; and without examination also–which goes
without saying. Their religion was inherited, their politics the
same. John Huss and his sort might find fault with the Church, in
Domremy it disturbed nobody’s faith; and when the split came,
when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once, nobody in
Domremy was worried about how to choose among them–the
Pope of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no
Pope at all. Every human creature in the village was an
Armagnac–a patriot–and if we children hotly hated nothing else in
the world, we did certainly hate the English and Burgundian name
and polity in that way.
Chapter 2 The Fa‰ry Tree of Domremy
OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that
remote time and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes
and alleys shaded and sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of
the barnlike houses. The houses were dimly lighted by
wooden-shuttered windows–that is, holes in the walls which
served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there was very little