astures,
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
mistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps some ancient
privilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for the altar, and
church vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what had been
Church lands. At all events this, and other kindred works of the needle,
seems to have been the chief occupation to which Jeanne was brought up.

The education of this humble house seems to have come entirely from the
mother. It was natural that the children should not know A from B, as
Jeanne afterward said; but no one did, probably, in the village nor even
on much higher levels than that occupied by the family of Jacques d'Arc.
But the children at their mother's knee learned the Credo, they
learned the simple universal prayers which are common to the wisest and
simplest, which no great savant or poet could improve, and no child fail
to understand: "Our Father, which art in Heaven," and that "Hail, Mary,
full of grace," which the world in that day put next. These were the
alphabet of life to the little Champagnards in their rough woollen
frocks and clattering sabots; and when the house had been set in
order,--a house not without comfort, with its big wooden presses full of
linen, and the _pot au feu_ hung over the cheerful fire,--came the
real work, perhaps embroideries for the Church, perhaps only good stout
shirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the