stories of English atrocities, to stir the village and rouse ever
generous sentiment and stirring of national indignation. They are said
by Michelet to have been no man's vassals, these outlying hamlets of
Champagne; the men were not called upon to follow their lord's banner
at a day's notice, as were the sons of other villages. There is no
appearance even of a lord at all upon this piece of Church land, which
was, we are told, directly held under the King, and would only therefore
be touched by a general levy _en masse_--not even perhaps by that,
so far off were they, and so near the frontier, where a reluctant
man-at-arms could without difficulty make his escape, as the unwilling
conscript sometimes does now.

There would seem to have been no one of more importance in Domremy than
Jacques d'Arc himself and his wife, respectable peasants, with a little
money, a considerable rural property in flocks and herds and pastures,
and a good reputation among their kind. He had three sons working with
their father in the peaceful routine of the fields; and two daughters,
of whom some authorities indicate Jeanne as the younger, and some as the
elder. The cottage interior, however, appears more clearly to us than
the outward aspect of the family life. The daughters were not, like the
children of poorer peasants, brought up to the rude outdoor labours
of the little farm. Painters have represented Jeanne as keeping her
father's sheep, and even the early witnesses say the same; but it is
contradicted by herself, who ought to know best--(except in taking her
turn to herd them into a place of safety on an alarm). If she followed
the flocks to the fields, it must have been, she says, in her childhood,
and she has no recollection of it. Hers was a more sheltered and safer
lot. The girls were brought up by their mother indoors in all the
labours of housewifery, but also in the delicate art of needlework,
so much more exquisite in those days than now. Perhaps Isabeau, the