llustrious lady, a descendant of Bolognese nobles and the widow of
a knight of Picardy, well versed in the liberal arts, was the author
of a number of lays, virelays,[1663] and ballads. Christine de Pisan,
noble and high-minded, wrote with distinction in prose and verse.
Loyal to France and a champion of her sex, there was nothing she more
fervently desired than to see the French prosperous and their ladies
honoured. In her old age she was cloistered in the Abbey of Poissy,
where her daughter was a nun. There, on the 31st of July, 1429, she
completed a poem of sixty-one stanzas, each containing eight lines of
eight syllables, in praise of the Maid. In halting measures and
affected language, these verses expressed the thoughts of the finest,
the most cultured and the most pious souls touching the angel of war
sent of God to the Dauphin Charles.[1664]

[Footnote 1663: A virelay was a later variation of the lay, differing
from it chiefly in the arrangement of the rhymes (W.S.).]

[Footnote 1664: Le Roux de Lincy and Tisserand, _Paris et ses
historiens_, pp. 426 _et seq._]

In this work she begins by saying that for eleven years she has spent
her cloistered life in weeping. And in very truth, this noble-hearted
woman wept over the misfortunes of the realm, into which she had been
born, wherein she had grown up, where kings and princes had received
her and learned poets had done her honour, and the language of which
she spoke with the precision of a purist. After eleven years of
mourning, the victories of the Dauphin were her first joy.

"At length," she says, "the sun begins to shine once more and the fine
days to bloom again. That royal child so long despised and offended,
behold him coming, wearing on his head a crown and accoutred with
spurs of gold. Let us cry: 'Noel! Charles, the seventh of that great
name, King of the French, thou hast recovered thy kingdom, with the
help of a Maid.'"

Christine recalls a prophecy concerning a King, Charles, son of
Charles, surnamed The Flying Hart,[1665] who was to be emperor. Of this
prophecy we know nothing save that the escutcheon of King Charles VII
was borne by two winged stags and that a letter to an Italian
merchant, written in 1429, contains an obscure announcement of the
coronation of the Dauphin at Rome.[1666]

[Footnote 1665: A winged stag (_le cerf-volant_) is the symbol of a
king. Froissart thus explains its origin. Before setting out for
Flanders, in 1382, Charle