The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1870-09-09
BY Alfred =. Horsley.
@lseellauy.
JOAN OF ARC.

JOAN OF AkC.
1t was the year 1412. On the French
1 throne sat hopeless luDatic. At on,
side of it stood a woman with the fac,
+ of an angel, and the temper of tigress
with a wit as sharp as a dagger, and .
heart as hard as stone. AT the othel
side stood man, bold i'm the field, un
scrrpulous in counsel as in love- with
ambition which might have been wrap
ped in the purple, and vices which
might have wallowed in the gutter
No wonder the people wavered in theil
allegiance, when the best thing pool
mad Charles vi. could do with his
crown was to play with it, and when
the reigns of government were held by
Queen Isabella and her lover, the Duke
of Burgundy. The foreign prince who
was to turn this flood of anarchy into a
tide of victory for himself had not yet
come. Before the invader set his foot
on French soil, she was born who was
first to check his advance.
Joan of Arc was the daughter of q
well-to-do peasant pair, who owned a
few sheep and goats, and perhaps a
cow or two. She was born at Domre-
my, village in Lorraine. She had
one sister and several brothers. By the
time the child was three years old,
Henry of England had sounded his tri-
umphant elarions at Agincourt, and as
that bias nhoed through the land,
the heart true French men and
women tEi|Eed with the Thirsty desire
for vengeance. As the little girl play
ed about, she must often have heard
her father and elder brothers curse the
foe who laid waste the fair fields of
France. Sometimes there would come
to the cottage door pale, limping man,
with perhaps the remnants of a bright
scarf still hanging around his shrunken
body, or a broken feather i'm his hat.
He would beg draught of milk-and
lit would be readily given to wounded
soldier, crawling back to his native viii
! lage. Then the child's eyes would fill
I with tears, as she paused in the midst
of some merry game, to hear of gar
dens rs pretty as her own trOdden
down by the hOOfs of English war hor-
ses, and little ones as young as herself
driven from their homes by the lawless
stranger. These things must have
mingled in the child's awakening mind
with eerie sanity legends and bright
fragments of romance, which her mo-
ther and the female neighbors told, as
they sat at their spinning-wheels. Es-
pecially did they relate wOndrous
things about a certain large beech tree
near the village, where the fairies dane
ed, and where there was fountain,
| the water of which was a sure cure for
every disease. The men may have in
| terrupted the women by saying that
this was no time for such idle fancies,
when war was every moment drawing
nearer their own hearths. But if they
did, the good DANES only smiled, and
said they knew by an old prophecy
that all this would not last long, for
maid from the Marches of their own
Lorraine was to save France in her
hour of greatest need.
There Were no village schools in
those days. Joan never learned to read
or write. The utmost she was taught
! amounted to q few prayers and the
Catechism, by her mother and the par
ish priest; but she could learn to think
without the help of any one, as she
kept the sheep, or worked in the gar
den, or rested for a brief space in the
shade at noon. And so did learn to
think to some purpose. The happy
homes of France were being made des-
olate by rude foreign soldiery. The
Dauphin, the handsomest and sweetest
young prince in the world, was depriv-
ed of his rightful inheritance. Surely
this could not go on. God and the ho-
ly Saints would not let it be. Such
were her thoughts. Then she would
repeat, over and over again, to herself
that prOphency about maid from tine
Marches Of Lorraine saving France.
Slowly the idea was shaped in her
mind, making her heart at first throb
with fearful joy, for some time not
even whispered by her own lips when
alone. What if one day | should be
that maid? We fully believe that that
old popular prophesy was the chief
primary cause of all which Joan of Arc
did. So true is the German proverb,
that to foretell makes to happen.
But Joan delighted to be active in
body as well as in mind. She loved to
outstrip her companions in the race
she loved to help her mother in house
hold work; she loved to coax a
friendly farmer to lend her q horse,
and springing Oh its back, without
saddle, to scamper away over the fields;
she loved to go into the wood, and,
with long stick for a lance, to tilt at
the trees. Later, when we wonder at
the immense fatigne which-Often al
most fasting-the girl went through, We
must call to mind the physical training
of her childhood. She was no little Ia
dy, who in the castle buttery had been
crammed by the servants with cakes
and sweetmeets; she was no burgher's
child, whose dainty feet were used to
no harder task than tripping to shop or
church. She was the daughter of the
people, who, as she watched the sheep,
had been bronzed by the sun and
drenched by the rain; whose hands
had been frayed in TIE washing-tub;
who, when sickly season among the
flock had made the family purse low,
had often even known what hunger
was. Her naturally good constitution
had thus been hardened, and she was
well prepared for soldiers life.
Joan's pretty face and bright cherry
ways made her great favOrite among
the neighbors, and no merry making
was complete without her. She heard
and thought so much about the Saints,
that they were to her quite rs real liv-
ing beings as the men and women
around her Among them, two were
tSltCltlly uCAt W hOi Nv
the sweet child-bride of the Lord, and
St. Margaret, who, smiling, held up
the cross to the monster. To these she
was always praying for France and for
herself, and on these her vivid imagin-
alton was always dwelling.
At length one day, when she was
about thirteen, as she worked in the
garden at noon, her brain being no
doubt somewhat heated by the summer
| sun, it seemed that st. Catharine and
st. Margaret appeared before her, in
| the midst of a brilliant light, and told
| her if she would be good, and always
live maid, she should one day deliver
France. She fell OH her knees and
made vow of virginity. We have
used the words ait seemed to her." but
with Joan it was not 'it seemed to me-"
but simply, 81 saw and l heard"
From tLat day to the end of her life
/ these beautiful hallucinatiOns constant
| ly haunted her, and were fully believed
by her to be realities. At intervals,
either i'm the busy hours of day or the
silent watches of the night, her heav-
enly friends would smile upon her from
their dazzling cloud. At intervals
their clear voices reached her ear'in the
church bells, or the whispers of the
wind, or the murmurs of the stream.
! After that first vision, q deeper color