and glorious, most human and most
heavenly, flows under that place like a hidden stream, rising at every
turn in springs and fountains. The poor little village lives in and for
her memory. Her presence haunts the ridges and the woods, treads the
green pastures, follows the white road beside the river, and breathes
in the never-resting valley-wind that marries the flowers in June and
spreads their seed in August.

At the small basilica built to her memory on the place where her old
beech-tree, "Fair May," used to stand there was an ancient caretaker
who explained to Pierre the pictures from the life of the Maid with
which the walls are decorated. They are stiff and conventional, but the
old man found them wonderful and told with zest the story of _La
Pucelle_--how she saw her first vision; how she recognized the Dauphin
in his palace at Chinon; how she broke the siege of Orleans; how she
saw Charles crowned in the cathedral at Rheims; how she was burned at
the stake in Rouen. But they could not kill her soul. She saved France.

In the village church there was a priest from the border of Alsace,
also a pilgrim like Pierre, but one who knew the shrine better. He
showed the difference between the new and the old parts of the
building. Certain things the Maid herself had seen and touched.
"Here is the old holy-water basin, an antique, broken column hollowed
out on top. Here her fingers must have rested often. Before this
ancient statue of Saint Michel she must have often knelt to say her
prayers. The cure of the parish was a friend of hers and loved to talk
with her. She was a good girl, devout and obedient, not learned, but a
holy and great soul. She saved France."

In the house where she was born, and passed her childhood, a crippled
old woman was custodian. It was a humble dwelling of plastered stone,
standing between two tall fir-trees, with ivy growing over the walls,
lilies and hollyhocks blooming in the garden. Pierre found it not half
so good a house as "_L'Alouette_." But to the custodian it was more
precious than a palace. In this upper room with its low mullioned
window the Maid began her life. Here, in the larger room below, is the
kneeling statue which the Princess Marie d'Orleans made of her. Here,
to the right, under the sloping roof, with its worm-eaten beams, she
slept and prayed and worked.

"See, here is the bread-board between two timbers where she cut the
bread for the _croute-au-pot_. From this sma