helped her to this act of
self-consecration, was not that illusion the unconscious outcome of
her own heart? Her foolishness was wiser than wisdom, for it was that
foolishness of martyrdom, without which men have never yet founded
anything great or useful. Cities, empires, republics rest on
sacrifice. It is not without reason therefore, not without justice
that, transformed by enthusiastic imagination, she became the symbol
of _la patrie_ in arms.

In 1817, Le Brun de Charmettes,[124] a royalist jealous of imperial
glory, wrote the first patriotic history of Jeanne d'Arc. The history
is an able work. It has been followed by many others, conceived in the
same spirit, composed on the same plan, written in the same style.
From 1841 to 1849, Jules Quicherat, by his publication of the two
trials and the evidence, worthily opened an incomparable period of
research and discovery. At the same time, Michelet in the fifth volume
of his "Histoire de France," wrote pages of high colour and rapid
movement, which will doubtless remain the highest expression of the
romantic art as applied to the Maid.[125]

[Footnote 124: Le Brun de Charmettes, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc
surnommee la Pucelle d'Orleans_, Paris, 1817, 4 vols. in 8vo.]

[Footnote 125: Michelet, _Histoire de France_, vol. v.]

But of all the histories written between 1817 and 1870, or at least of
all those with which I have made acquaintance, for I have not
attempted to read them all, the most discerning in my opinion is the
fourth book of Vallet de Viriville's "Histoire de Charles VII" in
which his chief preoccupation is to place the Maid in that group of
visionaries to which she really belongs.[126]

[Footnote 126: Vallet de Viriville, _Histoire de Charles VII_, vol.
ii, Paris, 1863, in 8vo.]

Wallon's book has been widely circulated if not widely read. A
monotonous, conscientious work moderately enthusiastic, it owes its
success to its unimpeachable exactitude.[127] If there must be an
orthodox Jeanne d'Arc to suit fashionable persons, then for such a
purpose, M. Marius Sepet's representation of the Maid would be equally
exact and more graceful.[128]

[Footnote 127: H. Wallon, _Jeanne d'Arc_, Paris, 1860, 2 vols. in
8vo.]

[Footnote 128: M. Sepet, _Jeanne d'Arc_, with an introduction by Leon
Gautier, Tours, 1869, in 8vo.]

After the war of 1871, the twofold influence of the patriotic spirit,
exalted by defeat, and the revival of Catholicism among the middle