The Life of Joan of Arc Part 8

[Footnote 157: The order of the births of Jacques d'Arc's children is extremely doubtful (_Trial_, index, under the word _Arc_).]

Jacques d'Arc's house was on the verge of the precincts of the parish church, dedicated to Saint Remi, the apostle of Gaul.[158] There was only the graveyard to cross when the child was carried to the font. It is said that in those days and in that country the form of exorcism p.r.o.nounced by the priest during the baptismal ceremony was much longer for girls than for boys.[159] We do not know whether Messire Jean Minet,[160] the parish priest, p.r.o.nounced it over the child in all its literal fulness, but we notice the custom as one of the numerous signs of the Church's invincible mistrust of woman.

[Footnote 158: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 393, _pa.s.sim_. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, vol. xvi, p. 357.]

[Footnote 159: A. Monteil, _Histoire des Francais_, 1853, in 18mo, vol. ii, p. 194.]

[Footnote 160: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 46. Jean Minet was a native of Neufchateau.]

According to the custom then prevailing the child had several G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers.[161] The men-gossips were Jean Morel, of Greux,[162] husbandman; Jean Barrey, of Neufchateau; Jean Le Langart or Lingui, and Jean Rainguesson; the women, Jeannette, wife of Thevenin le Royer, called Roze, of Domremy; Beatrix, wife of Estellin,[163] husbandman in the same village; Edite, wife of Jean Barrey; Jeanne, wife of Aubrit, called Jannet and described as Maire Aubrit when he was appointed secretary to the lords of Bourlemont; Jeannette, wife of Thiesselin de Vittel, a scholar of Neufchateau. She was the most learned of all, for she had heard stories read out of books. Among the G.o.dmothers there are mentioned also the wife of Nicolas d'Arc, Jacques' brother, and two obscure Christians, one called Agnes, the other Sibylle.[164] Here, as in every group of good Catholics, we have a number of Jeans, Jeannes, and Jeannettes. St.

John the Baptist was a saint of high repute; his festival, kept on the 24th of June, was a red-letter day in the calendar, both civil and religious; it marked the customary date for leases, hirings, and contracts of all kinds. In the opinion of certain ecclesiastics, especially of the mendicant orders, St. John the Evangelist, whose head had rested on the Saviour's breast and who was to return to earth when the ages should have run their course, was the greatest saint in Paradise.[165] Wherefore, in honour of the Precursor of the Saviour or of his best beloved disciple, when babes were baptised the name Jean or Jeanne was frequently preferred to all others. To render these holy names more in keeping with the helplessness of childhood and the humble destiny awaiting most of us, they were given the diminutive forms of Jeannot and Jeannette. On the banks of the Meuse the peasants had a particular liking for these diminutives at once unpretentious and affectionate: Jacquot, Pierrollot, Zabillet, Mengette, Guillemette.[166] After the wife of the scholar, Thiesselin, the child was named Jeannette. That was the name by which she was known in the village. Later, in France, she was called Jeanne.[167]

[Footnote 161: J. Corblet, _Parrains et marraines_, in _Revue de l'art chretien_, 1881, vol. xiv, pp. 336 _et seq._]

[Footnote 162: Simeon Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, proofs and ill.u.s.trations, li, p. 98.]

[Footnote 163: _Ibid._, p. clxxix, note.]

[Footnote 164: Cf. _Trial_, index, under _parrains_ and _marraines_.

It is not always possible to a.s.sign to these personages the names they bore and the position they occupied at the exact date when they are introduced.]

[Footnote 165: _Relation du greffier de La Roch.e.l.le_, in the _Revue Historique_, vol. iv, p. 342. Cf. Eustache Deschamps, ballad 354, vol.

iii, p. 83, ed. Queux de Saint Hilaire.]

[Footnote 166: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 74-388; vol. v, pp. 151, 220, _pa.s.sim_.]

[Footnote 167: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 46. Henri Lepage, _Jeanne d'Arc est-elle Lorraine?_ Nancy, 1852, pp. 57-79.]

She was brought up in her father's house, in Jacques' poor dwelling.[168] In the front there were two windows admitting but a scanty light. The stone roof forming one side of a gable on the garden side sloped almost to the ground. Close by the door, as was usual in that country, were the dung-heap, a pile of firewood, and the farm tools covered with rust and mud. But the humble enclosure, which served as orchard and kitchen-garden, in the spring bloomed in a wealth of pink and white flowers.[169]

[Footnote 168: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 244 _et seq._ Jacques d'Arc's house doubtless looked on to the road; the Du Lys, or rather the Thiesselins, pulled it down and erected in its place a house no longer existing. The s.h.i.+elds which ornamented its facade have been placed upon the door of the building now shown as Jeanne's house. What is represented as Jeanne's room is the bakehouse (e. Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 74). See an article by Henri Arsac in _L'echo de l'Est_, 26 July, 1890. A whole literature has been written on this subject (Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, pp. 330 _et seq._).]

[Footnote 169: emile Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne d'Arc_, _pa.s.sim_.]

These good Christians had one more child, the youngest, Pierre, who was called Pierrelot.[170]

[Footnote 170: _Trial_, vol. v, pp. 151, 220.]

Fed on light wine and brown bread, hardened by a hard life, Jeanne grew up in an unfruitful land, among people who were rough and sober.

She lived in perfect liberty. Among hard-working peasants the children are left to themselves. Isabelle's daughter seems to have got on well with the village children.

A little neighbour, Hauviette, three or four years younger than she, was her daily companion. They liked to sleep together in the same bed.[171] Mengette, whose parents lived close by, used to come and spin at Jacques d'Arc's house. She helped Jeanne with her household duties.[172] Taking her distaff with her, Jeanne used often to go and pa.s.s the evening at Saint-Amance, at the house of a husbandman Jacquier, who had a young daughter.[173] Boys and girls grew up as a matter of course side by side. Being neighbours, Jeanne and Simonin Musnier's son were brought up together. When Musnier's son was still a child he fell ill, and Jeanne nursed him.[174]

[Footnote 171: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 417: "_Jacuit amorose in domo patris sui._"]

[Footnote 172: _Ibid._, p. 429.]

[Footnote 173: _Ibid._, p. 408.]

[Footnote 174: _Ibid._, p. 423.]

In those days it was not unprecedented for village maidens to know their letters. A few years earlier Maitre Jean Gerson had counselled his sisters, peasants of Champagne, to learn to read, and had promised, if they succeeded, to give them edifying books.[175] Albeit the niece of a parish priest, Jeanne did not learn her horn-book, thus resembling most of the village children, but not all, for at Maxey there was a school attended by boys from Domremy.[176]

[Footnote 175: E. Georges, _Jeanne d'Arc consideree au point de vue Franco-Champenois_, p. 115. De La Fons-Melicocq, _Doc.u.ments inedits pour servir a l'histoire de l'instruction publique en France et a l'histoire des moeurs au XV'ieme siecle_, in the _Bulletin de la Societe des Antiquaires de la Morinie_, vol. iii, pp. 460 _et seq._]

[Footnote 176: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 65-66. (_Item: je donne a Oudinot, a Richard et a Gerard, clercz enfantz du maistre de l'escole de Marcey des...o...b.. Brixey, doubz escus pour priier pour mi et pour dire les sept psaulmes._) (Item: I give to the boys, Oudinot, Richard, and Gerard, scholars of the school-master at Marcey below Brixey, twelve crowns to pray for me and to repeat the seven psalms.) The will of Jean de Bourlemont, 23 October, 1399, in S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, doc.u.ment in facsimile xiii.]

From her mother she learnt the Paternoster, Ave Maria, and the credo.[177] She heard a few beautiful stories of the saints. That was her whole education. On holy days, in the nave of the church, beneath the pulpit, while the men stood round the wall, she, in the manner of the peasant women, squatted on her toes, listening to the priest's sermon.[178]

[Footnote 177: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 46, 47.]

[Footnote 178: _Ibid._, vol. ii, p. 402. See in Montfaucon's _Monuments de la Monarchie Francaise_, vol. iii, the second miniature, the "Douze perils d'enfer" (the twelve perils of h.e.l.l).]

As soon as she was old enough she laboured in the fields, weeding, digging, and, like the Lorraine maidens of to-day, doing the work of a man.[179]

[Footnote 179: _Trial_, vol. ii, pp. 409, 415, 420.]

The river meadows were the chief source of wealth to the dwellers on the banks of the Meuse. When the hay harvest was over, according to his share of the arable land, each villager in Domremy had the right to turn so many head of cattle into the meadows of the village. Each family took its turn at watching the flocks and herds in the meadows.

Jacques d'Arc, who had a little grazing land of his own, turned out his oxen and his horses with the others. When his turn came to watch them, he delegated the task to his daughter Jeanne, who went off into the meadow, distaff in hand.[180]

[Footnote 180: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 51, 66; vol. ii, p. 404. S. Luce, _Jeanne d'Arc a Domremy_, p. lij.]

But she would rather do housework or sew or spin. She was pious. She swore neither by G.o.d nor his saints; and to a.s.sert the truth of anything she was content to say: "There's no mistake."[181] When the bells rang for the _Angelus_, she crossed herself and knelt.[182] On Sat.u.r.day, the Holy Virgin's day, she climbed the hill overgrown with gra.s.s, vines, and fruit-trees, with the village of Greux nestling at its foot, and gained the wooded plateau, whence she could see on the east the green valley and the blue hills. On the brow of the hill, barely two and a half miles from the village, in a shaded dale full of murmuring sounds, from beneath beeches, ash-trees, and oaks gush forth the clear waters of the Saint-Thiebault spring, which cure fevers and heal wounds. Above the spring rises the chapel of Notre-Dame de Bermont. In fine weather it is pervaded by the scent of fields and woods, and winter wraps this high ground in a mantle of sadness and silence. In those days, clothed in a royal cloak and wearing a crown, with her divine child in her arms, Notre-Dame de Bermont received the prayers and the offerings of young men and maidens. She worked miracles. Jeanne used to visit her with her sister Catherine and the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, or quite alone. And as often as she could she lit a candle in honour of the heavenly lady.[183]

[Footnote 181: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 404.]

[Footnote 182: _Ibid._, vol. i, p. 423.]

[Footnote 183: _Trial_, index, at the word _Bermont_. Du Haldat, _Notice sur la chapelle de Belmont_, in the _Memoires de l'Academie Stanislas de Nancy_, 1833-1834, p. 96. e. Hinzelin, _Chez Jeanne d'Arc_, p. 95. Lanery d'Arc, _Livre d'or_, p. 330.]

A mile and a quarter west of Domremy was a hill covered with a dense wood, which few dared enter for fear of boars and wolves. Wolves were the terror of the countryside. The village mayors gave rewards for every head of a wolf or wolf-cub brought them.[184] This wood, which Jeanne could see from her threshold, was the Bois Chesnu, the wood of oaks, or possibly the h.o.a.ry [_chenu_] wood, the old forest.[185] We shall see later how this Bois Chesnu was the subject of a prophecy of Merlin the Magician.

[Footnote 184: Alexis Monteil, _Histoire des Francois_, vol. i, p.

91.]

[Footnote 185: _Trial_, index, under the words _Bois Chesnu_.]

At the foot of the hill, towards the village, was a spring[186] on the margin of which gooseberry bushes intertwined their branches of greyish green. It was called the Gooseberry Spring or the Blackthorn Spring.[187]

If, as was thought by a graduate of the University of Paris,[188] Jeanne described it as _La Fontaine-aux-Bonnes-Fees-Notre-Seigneur_, it must have been because the village people called it by that name. By making use of such a term it would seem as if those rustic souls were trying to Christianise the nymphs of the woods and waters, in whom certain teachers discerned the demons which the heathen once wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.ddesses.[189] It was quite true. G.o.ddesses as much feared and venerated as the Parcae had come to be called Fates,[190] and to them had been attributed power over the destinies of men. But, fallen long since from their powerful and high estate, these village fairies had grown as simple as the people among whom they lived. They were invited to baptisms, and a place at table was laid for them in the room next the mother's. At these festivals they ate alone and came and went without any one's knowing; people avoided spying upon their movements for fear of displeasing them. It is the custom of divine personages to go and come in secret. They gave gifts to new-born infants. Some were very kind, but most of them, without being malicious, appeared irritable, capricious, jealous; and if they were offended even unintentionally, they cast evil spells. Sometimes they betrayed their feminine nature by unaccountable likes and dislikes. More than one found a lover in a knight or a churl; but generally such loves came to a bad end. And, when all is said, gentle or terrible, they remained the Fates, they were always the Destinies.[191]

[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, index, under the words _Fontaine des Groseilliers_.]

[Footnote 187: _Ibid._, vol. i, pp. 67-210; vol. ii. pp. 391 _et seq._]

[Footnote 188: _Journal d'un bourgeois de Paris_, ed. Tuetey, p. 267.]

[Footnote 189: _Trial_, vol. i, p. 209.]

[Footnote 190: _Trial_, vol. i, pp. 67, 187, 209; vol. ii, pp. 390, 404, 450.]