With the enchanted Jeannette for her audience, Sybille proceeded to recite the legend of Hena:

"And those worlds," asked Jeannette, "are they the paradise where the angels and the saints of the good God are? Are they, god-mother?"

Sybille shook her head doubtfully, without answering, and continued the recital of her legend:

"Oh, god-mother, if the good God, his saints and his archangels should ask me: 'Jeannette, which would you prefer to be, Hena or the martial maid of Lorraine who is to drive the wicked English from France and restore his crown to our gentle Dauphin?'—"

"Which would you prefer?"

"I would prefer to be Hena, who, in order to deliver her country, offered her blood to the good God without shedding the blood of any other people! To be obliged to kill so many people before vanquishing the enemy and before crowning our poor young Sire! Oh, god-mother," added Jeannette, shivering, "Merlin said that he saw blood flowing in torrents and steaming like a fog!"

Jeannette broke off and rose precipitately upon hearing, a few steps off in the copse, a great noise mixed with plaintive bleatings. Just then one of her lambs leaped madly out of the bush pursued silently by a large black dog which was snapping viciously at its legs. To drop her distaff, pick up two stones that she armed herself with and throw herself upon the dog was the work of an instant for the child, thoroughly aroused by the danger to one of her pets, while Sybille cried in frightened tones:

"Take care! Take care! The dog that does not bark is mad!"

When Jeannette returned to Sybille the latter was struck by the intrepid mien of the child. The ribbons on her head having become untied, her hair was left free to tumble down upon her shoulders in long black tresses. Still out of breath from running, she leaned for a moment against the moss-grown rocks near the fountain with her arms hanging down upon her scarlet skirt, when, noticing the lamb that lay bleeding on the ground, still palpitating with fear, the little shepherdess fell to crying. Her anger gave place to intense pity. She dipped up some water at the spring in the hollow of her hands, knelt down beside the lamb, washed its wounds and said in a low voice:

"Our gentle Dauphin is innocent as you, poor lambkin; and those wicked English dogs seek to tear him up."

In the distance the bells of the church of Domremy began their measured chimes. At the sound, of which she was so passionately fond, the little shepherdess cried delightedly:

"Oh, god-mother, the bells, the bells!"

Several weeks went by. The prophecy of Merlin, the remembrance of the King's misfortunes and of the disasters of France, ravaged by the English, obstinately crowded upon Jeannette's mind, before whom her parents frequently conversed upon the sad plight of the country. Thus, often during the hours she spent in solitary musings with her flock in the fields or the woods, she repeated in a low voice the passage from the prophecy of the Gallic bard:

"Gaul, lost by a woman, shall be saved by a virgin
From the borders of Lorraine and a forest of old oaks."

Or that other:

"Oh, how much blood!
It spouts up, it flows in torrents!
It steams and, like a mist, it rises heavenward
Where the thunder peals, where the lightning flashes!
Athwart those peals of thunder, those flashes of lightning,
I see a martial virgin.
White is her steed, white is her armor;
She battles, she battles still in the midst of a forest of lances,
And seems to be riding on the backs of the archers."

Whereupon the angel of dazzling light would place the royal crown in the hands of the martial virgin, who crowned her King in the midst of shouts of joy and chants of victory!

Every day, looking with her mind's eyes towards the borders of Lorraine and failing to see the emancipating virgin, Jeannette beseeched her two good saints—St. Marguerite and St. Catherine—to intercede with the Lord in behalf of the safety of the gentle Dauphin, who had been deprived of his throne. Vainly did she beseech them to obtain the deliverance of poor France, for so many years a prey to the English; and she also fervently implored heaven for the fulfilment of the prophecy of Merlin, a prophecy that seemed plausible to Jeannette's mind after Sybille had told her of the exploits of the martial virgins who came in their ships from the distant seas of the North and besieged Paris; or the prowess of Jeannette of Montfort, battling like a lioness defending her whelps; or, finally, the heroic deeds of the Gallic women of olden days who accompanied their husbands, their brothers and their fathers to battle.

It was not thus with Jeannette. She experienced these mysterious symptoms; but her simplicity misled her as to their cause. Her imagination filled with the marvelous legends of her god-mother, whom she continued to meet almost daily at the Fountain of the Fairies, her spirit ever more impressed by the prophecies of Merlin, although she never identified herself with them, Jeannette imputed, in the chaste ignorance of her soul, the vague sense of sadness that assailed her, her involuntary tears, her confused aspirations—all precursory symptoms of puberty—to the painful and tender compassion that the misfortunes of Gaul and of her young King inspired her with.

"Isabelle," one evening James Darc said to his wife, with a severe air, she and he being left alone near the hearth, "I am not at all satisfied with Jeannette. In a few months she will be fourteen; large and strong though she is for her age, she is becoming lazy. Yesterday I ordered her to draw water from the well to water the vegetables in the garden and I saw her stop a score of times with her hands on the rope and her nose in the air gaping at the eaves of the house. I shall have to shake her rudely out of the sin of laziness."

"James, listen to me. Have you not noticed that for some time our Jeannette is rather pale, has hardly any appetite, is often absent minded; and, moreover, she is more reserved than formerly?"

"I do not complain of her talking little. I do not love gabblers. I complain of her laziness. I wish her to become again industrious as she once was, and active as of old."

"The change that we notice in the girl does not, my friend, proceed from bad will."

"Whence then?"

"This morning, as I went to Neufchateau with butter and poultry, I consulted Brother Arsene, the surgeon, on Jeannette's condition."

"And what did Brother Arsene say?"

"Having been told what her ailments were, he asked her age. 'Thirteen and a half, near fourteen,' I answered him. 'Is she strong and otherwise of good health?' 'Yes, brother, she is strong and was always well until these changes came that so much alarm me.' 'Be easy,' was Brother Arsene's final remark, 'be easy, good woman, your "little" daughter will surely soon be a "big" daughter. In a word, she will have "developed." At the approach of that crisis, always grave, young girls grow languishing and dreamy. They experience aches. They become taciturn and seek solitude. Even the most robust become feeble, the most industrious indolent, the gayest sad. That lasts a few months and then they become themselves again. But,' added Brother Arsene, 'you must be careful, under pain of provoking serious accidents, not to cross or scold your daughter at such a period of her life. Strong emotions have been known to check and suppress forever the salutary crisis that nature brings on. In such cases serious, often irreparable harm may follow. There are young girls who, in that manner, have gone wholly insane.' So you see, James, how we shall have to humor Jeannette."

"Oh, mercy! On the contrary, I noticed that she was as affectionate toward you as ever—"

Isabelle was suddenly interrupted by violent rapping at the street door.

"Who can that be, knocking at this hour of the night?" said James Darc, rising, as much surprised as his wife at the interruption, to open the door.

The door was hardly ajar when an aged man of venerable and mild appearance, but at that moment pale with fear, hastily dismounted from his horse and cried, breathlessly, "Woe is us! Friend, the English! the English! the country is about to be invaded!"

"Great God! What is it you say, uncle!" exclaimed Isabelle, recognizing Denis Laxart, her mother's brother.

Uttering the last word, the distracted Denis Laxart threw himself upon his horse and disappeared at full gallop, leaving James Darc and his wife stupefied and terror stricken. Until now the English never had approached the peaceful valley of the Meuse. James Darc's sons, whom the violent raps given at the door by Denis Laxart had frightened out of their slumbers, hastily slipped on their clothes and rushed into the main room.

"Father, has any misfortune happened? What makes you look so frightened?"

"The English!" answered Isabelle, pale with fear; "we are lost, my dear children! It is done for us!"

"The village of St. Pierre is on fire," cried James Darc. "Look yonder, at the border of the Meuse, towards the Castle of Ile. Look at those tongues of flame! May God help us! Our country is now to be ravaged like the rest of Gaul! Woe is us!"

"Children," said Isabelle, "help to gather whatever is most valuable and let us flee."

"Let us drive our cattle before us," added James. "If the English seize or kill them we shall be ruined. Woe is us!"

"But whither shall we flee?" asked Peter, the elder son. "In what direction shall we run without the risk of falling into the hands of the English?"

"It is better to stay right here," observed John. "We cannot fare worse than if we flee. We shall try to defend ourselves."

Weeping and moaning and scarcely knowing what she did, poor Isabelle tugged at her trunks, all too heavy to be carried far, and threw about pell-mell on the floor the best clothes of herself and her husband. Her wedding dress, carefully packed up; pieces of cloth and of wool woven by her during the long winter evenings; Jeannette's christening gown, a pious maternal relic;—all lay strewn about. She put around her neck an old chain, inherited from her mother, which was her main ornament on holidays. She stowed away in her pocket a little silver cup, won long ago by her husband in a shooting contest.

Awakened, like her brothers, Jeannette also had hurriedly put on her clothes, and now entered the room. Her father and brothers, taking no notice of her, were arguing with increasing anxiety the point of fleeing or of waiting at all hazards the approach of the English. From time to time they stepped to the door and, with despair plainly depicted on their faces, pointed at the conflagration which, only two leagues away, was devouring the village of St. Pierre. The flames now leaped up only by fits and starts; evidently the fire had little left to consume.

"A curse upon the English! What shall we do?"

"Where shall we flee for safety?" asked James. "We may run up against the English on the road and that would be running towards danger!"

"Let us stay here, father," John insisted, "and defend ourselves. I said so before. It is the best course to take."

"But we have no arms!" cried Peter, "and those brigands are armed to the teeth! They will slaughter us all!"

"What shall we do?" cried in chorus James and his sons, "what shall we do? Oh, Lord, have pity on us!"

Isabelle did not listen; she heard neither her husband nor her sons. She thought only of fleeing; and she ran from one room to the other and hither and thither, to make sure that she had left nothing of value behind; and quite unable to resign herself to the giving up of her copper and tin utensils that she had so industriously polished and spread upon the dresser.

"Jeannette is right," cried her two brothers, "let us to the Castle of Ile. We and our cattle will cross over on the ferry. Sister is right."

"Your sister is crazy!" replied James stamping on the ground. "The English are at St. Pierre. They are burning and killing everything! To go in that direction is to run into the very jaws of the wolf."

"Father, your fear is unfounded," explained Jeannette. "The English, after having burnt the village, will have abandoned it. It will take us more than two hours to reach the place. We shall take the old path through the forest. We are sure not to meet the enemy on that side. We shall cross the ferry and find refuge in the castle."

"That is right," said the two boys; "their mischief is done and the brigands will have decamped and left the ruins behind them."

James Darc seemed convinced by his daughter's reasoning. Suddenly one of the lads cried out, pointing to a new conflagration much nearer to Domremy:

"See, Jeannette is not mistaken; the English have left St. Pierre and are approaching by the open road. They burn down everything on their way. They must have just set fire to the hamlet of Maxey!"

The family of Darc had not been the only ones to discover the nocturnal raid of the English. The whole parish was on foot, a prey to consternation and terror.

The more frightened gathered a few eatables, and abandoning all else, fled to the forest. Others, hoping that the English might not advance as far as Domremy, took the chances of remaining in the village. Finally, others there were who also decided to flee for safety to the Castle of Ile. The Darc family soon left their house, Jeannette calling her sheep, which obediently followed, James leading the cows that hauled the wagon on which his wife was seated in the midst of her bundles of goods, a few bags of wheat and the household utensils that she had managed to get together. The two lads carried on their shoulders the implements of husbandry that were portable.

The fugitives arrived near the hamlet of St. Pierre, situated on the Meuse. There was nothing left but a heap of blackened debris, with here and there a wooden beam still burning—nothing else was left of the village. Walking a little ahead of her herd, Jeannette stood still, stupefied at the spectacle.

Such had been the savage war waged in Gaul for the last fifty years since the defeat of the French nobility at Poitiers.

The shocking spectacle unnerved Jeannette and, seized again with vertigo, she tottered and fell to the ground; Peter, her elder brother, coming close behind, raised her, and, with the help of his father, placed her on the wagon with her mother.

The wife of the castellan of Ile and her husband, a brave soldier, allowed the fugitives from Domremy to camp with their cattle in the yard of the castle, a vast space within the fortifications that were situated between the arms of the Meuse. Unfortunately the inhabitants of St. Pierre, who were taken by surprise at night, had not been able to reach this hospitable place of refuge. After ravaging the valley the English gathered near Vaucouleurs and concentrated their forces before that place, the siege of which they pressed vigorously for a short time. A few nights later a few of the peasants who had taken refuge in the Castle of Ile, among them Peter, Jeannette's elder brother, went out on a reconnoitering expedition and on their return reported that the enemy had departed from that part of the country. Tired of arson and carnage, the English had withdrawn from the neighborhood of Domremy after pillaging only a few of the houses and killing some of its inhabitants.

During her sojourn in the Castle of Ile Jeannette had been the prey of severe attacks of fever. At times during her delirium she invoked St. Catherine and St. Marguerite, her good saints, believing that she saw them near her, and beseeching them with her hands clasped to put an end to the atrocities of the English. At other times the shocking scene of the hamlet of St. Pierre would rise in her troubled brain and she would cry out aloud or would sob at the sight of the victims that rose before her, livid and blood-bespattered. At still other times, her eyes shooting fire and her cheeks aflame she spoke of a martial virgin clad in white armor and mounted on a milk white steed whom, she said, she saw falling upon and exterminating the English. At such times Jeannette repeated with a quivering voice the refrain of Merlin's prophecy—

"Gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin
From the borders of Lorraine and a forest of old oaks."

Two months passed and Jeannette was now nearly fourteen. She seemed to have regained her normal health, but the symptoms of puberty had disappeared and she frequently suffered from intolerable headaches followed by severe attacks of vertigo.

Feeling all the more uneasy as she remembered the words of the physician, Isabelle once more consulted him and he answered that the violent emotion caused by the invasion of the English and the spectacle of their cruelty must have deeply disturbed the girl's organization and checked her sexual development; but that her ailments would cease and the laws of nature resume their course in her physical being as the mental effects of her deeply stirred emotion wore off.

These thoughts ever absorbed Jeannette's mind when alone in the woods or the field grazing her herd. Then would she yield unrestrained to revery and to the recollections of the legends that had had so much to do in forming her mind.

"For whom that royal crown? That steed? That armor?
Oh, how much blood! It spouts up, it flows in torrents!
Oh, how much blood I see! How much blood I see!
It is a lake, a sea of blood.
It steams—its vapor ascends—
It ascends like an autumn mist to the sky,
To the sky where the thunder peals and the lightning flashes.
Athwart these peals of thunder, these flashes of lightning,
That blood-red mist, I see a martial virgin.
White is her armor, white her steed.
She battles—
She battles and battles still in the midst of a forest of lances
And seems to ride on the backs of the archers—"

The cry of victory caused Jeannette to bound to her feet transported with anger and shame at the sight of the boys of her village who battled for Gaul and the King fleeing before the partisans of Burgundy and England. A lad of about fifteen years, named Urbain, who captained the fleeing troop, and who was personally a brave soldier, seeing that his scalp was cut by a stone and his cap remained in the hands of the enemy, ran past Jeannette.

"Are you running for safety, Urbain?"

"Sure! That's what I'm doing," answered the mimic captain, raising his head and wiping the blood from his forehead with a handful of grass. "We fought as long as we could—but those of Maxey are about twenty and we are only eleven!"

Jeannette stamped on the ground with her foot and replied: "You have strength to run—and yet you have no strength to fight!"

"But they have sticks, and that is not fair—we are the weaker side."

"Fall upon them and capture their sticks!"

"That is easy to say, Jeannette!"

"As easy to do as to say!" cried the shepherdess.

"You will see—Come! Come back with me!"

Without noticing whether she was followed or not, but yielding to an involuntary prompting, Jeannette walked toward the enemy, then masked by a clump of trees, and cried out in ringing tones, while brandishing her distaff in lieu of a banner: "France! France! Off with you Burgundians and English!"

In the security of their triumph, the soldiers of the hostile army, who never expected to see their adversaries rally, had stopped about a hundred yards away and were resting on their laurels; and stretching themselves on the flower-studded grass, picked wild strawberries and played with stones. Presently some of them climbed up in the trees looking for birds' nests, and the others scattered among the bushes picking and eating berries. The unexpected resumption of hostilities, the sudden cries hurled at them by the royalist army and by Jeannette, who now led it, greatly surprised the Burgundians, who, nevertheless, did not show the white feather. Their chief recalled his soldiers to arms. Immediately the plunderers of birds' nests slid down the trees, the berry pickers rushed up with crimson lips and those who had begun to fall asleep on the grass jumped up and rubbed their eyes. But before the line of battle could be formed the soldiers of Jeannette, anxious to avenge their former defeat, and carried away by the inspiring conduct of their present chief, fell valiantly upon the foe with redoubled cries of: "France! France!" Our heroes seized the Burgundians and English by the hair, boxed their ears and thumped them with such fury that the tables were completely turned; the erstwhile victors now became the vanquished, broke ranks and took to their heels.

Jumping off the ass, Jeannette allowed it to continue its route; and threatening with her innocent distaff the soldiers, who surrendered at discretion, she shouted to them in a resonant voice:

"Wretches! Why do you call yourselves Burgundians and English, seeing that we are all of France? It is against the English that we must all take the field! Oh, they do us so much harm!"

Saying this, the young shepherdess, a prey to an undefinable emotion, broke into tears, her knees trembled and she fell to the ground beside the vanquished foe, who, rising in inexpressible terror, incontinently resumed their headlong flight, leaving Jeannette alone so confused in mind that she knew not whether she was awake or dreaming.

These aspirations were vaguely mixed with the recollections of the horrible butchery in the village of St. Pierre and the prophecy of Merlin, and caused the young shepherdess to raise her thoughts to St. Catherine and St. Marguerite, her two good saints, to whom she now prayed fervently to chase the English from France and to take pity on the gentle Dauphin. The chaotic jangle of these apparently disconnected and aimless thoughts that clashed together in the burning brain of Jeannette immediately brought on one of those painful spells of dizziness to which she had been ever more subject since the profound perturbation of her health. She relapsed into a sort of ecstasy; again a misty curtain was drawn before her eyes; and when she regained consciousness the sun had gone down and it was dusk.

In his rage James was on the point of beating the guilty girl, when Isabelle ran to him and caught his arm, crying, "James, I beg of you to pardon her this time!"

The fast to which Jeannette's father had sentenced her was destined to lead to grave consequences. Grieved at the reprovals he had heaped upon her, the young shepherdess led her sheep to the fold and retired to bed without sharing the family's evening meal.

At Jeannette's age hunger is peculiarly imperious. If the stomach is empty the brain is doubly active, as appears from the hallucinations of the anchorites who had long abstained from food. The poor child, overcome by her father's severity, sought solace in the recollections of the day's happenings and wept a great deal before she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Never had her sleep been so troubled by bizarre dreams, in which the marvelous legends that her god-mother Sybille had told her reappeared in various grotesque shapes. In her dreams, Hena, the virgin of the Isle of Sen, offered her blood as a sacrifice for the deliverance of Gaul and, erect with her harp in her hand, expired amidst the flames on the pyre. But, Oh, horror and surprise! Jeannette recognized her own features in those of Hena.

"Gaul, lost by a woman, will be saved by a virgin
From the borders of Lorraine and a forest of old oaks."

Then, again, it was the infantile combat of the day that surged uppermost in her disordered mind and now assumed the gigantic proportions of an immense battle. Thousands of cuirassed and casqued soldiers, armed with lances and swords, pressing hard, undulating, combing and breaking like the waves of the sea, were hurled against each other and were cut to pieces—opposing floods of iron in mutual clash. The clash of armors, the cries of the combatants, the neighing of horses, the fanfare of trumpets, the discharges of artillery resounded from afar. The red flag of England quartered with the gold fleur-de-lis floated over the blood-stained embattled ranks. A martial maid, cased in white armor and mounted on a white steed held the French flag—and once more Jeannette recognized her own features in those of the martial maid. St. Catherine and St. Marguerite hovered over her in the azure sky and smiled down upon her while St. Michael, the archangel, with his wide wings outspread and his face half turned toward her, pointed with his flaming sword to a brilliant star-like golden crown held by two angels in dazzling white.

This sentence was a severe punishment to Jeannette. It was to her a grievous sorrow to renounce going every day to the clear fountain and the shady spot where she derived so much pleasure from listening to the chimes of the bells, the last vibrations of which had latterly reached her ears as a celestial whisper of silvery voices. She submitted to the paternal will, however, and occupied herself during the morning with household duties.

More indulgent than her husband, Isabelle said to her daughter shortly before noon, "Go and play in the garden until the meal hour."

"The time approaches—You will drive the English out of Gaul—You are the virgin prophesied by Merlin."

Joan's grand uncle, Denis Laxart, lived in Vaucouleurs; he had long known Robert of Baudricourt, a renowned captain of the country, who abhorred the English and was ardently devoted to the royalist party. Joan often interrogated her uncle about Captain Robert of Baudricourt, upon his nature, upon his affability, upon the manner in which he treated the poor. In his simplicity, the good Denis had no suspicion of the purpose of his niece's interrogatories; he attributed them to girlish curiosity, and answered that Robert of Baudricourt, as brave a soldier as he was brutal and violent, usually sent everybody to the devil, was a terrible man, much feared by himself, and finally, that he never approached the captain but in trembling.

"It is a pity that so good a captain should be of so intractable and so rough a nature," Joan would say with a sigh, to her uncle, and sad and discouraged she would drop the subject only to return to it again.