he people, soothsayer, superstitious, a
blasphemer against God, presumptuous, miscreant, boaster, idolatress,
cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and
heretic._"

Then, with the learned doctors and churchmen drinking in the words, a
sermon was read for the benefit of her soul. After it was ended the
Bishop of Beauvais read the sentence which concluded by abandoning her
to the arm of the law, for the Church itself could not pronounce
sentence of death, but must leave that to the civil magistrates.
Neither could the clergymen behold the infliction of the sentence, and
they all came down from their seats and left the market place. What
followed was supposed to be too dreadful for them to see.

So Jeanne was burned, and even in her death there took place something
approaching a miracle, for when the fire was extinguished her brave
heart was found intact among the embers, and the frightened English
threw it into the river.

But the end did not come here. The enemies of Jeanne were so afraid of
her power that they followed her with persecution after she was dead
and made various attempts to darken her reputation, and give her memory
an evil name. But they defeated their own ends, for twenty-five years
later another trial was held in which the Maid was pronounced to be
innocent. And nearly five hundred years later, in 1909, Pope Leo the
Thirteenth took the first step toward making her a Saint by pronouncing
her "venerable." Her canonization followed in 1920.

The marvels wrought by Jeanne still continue,--for without her there
might be a different France from that which we know to-day. In Domremy
the house of Jacques d'Arc still stands, much the same, in many ways,
as it was when she beheld her visions there. In addition a splendid
church has been built to her memory not far from the village she loved.
And her name and fame grow greater as time passes.

CHAPTER XII

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS

In the year 1447, or about that time, there was born in the city of
Genoa in Italy a boy named Christopher Columbus. He was the son of a
wool weaver named Domenico Columbus, and spent his early boyhood in the
dark and busy weaver's quarter of Genoa, always within hearing of the
sound of the loom. His father was an industrious and hard-working man,
and designed that Christopher should become a wool weaver like himself.
It was a good business, he thought, and all his sons might enter it
with credit and pr