rat, Vallet de Viriville, Simeon Luce, and
Joseph Fabre. Two headings will suffice to give an idea of the book's
tone: _The Pseudo-theologians, executioners of Jeanne d'Arc,
executioners of the Papacy_ (vol. i, p. 87); _The University of Paris
and the Brigandage of Rouen_ (p. 149). The author too often judges the
fifteenth century by the standards of the nineteenth. Is he quite sure
that if he had been a member of the University of Paris in 1431 he
would have thought and pronounced in favour of Jeanne, and in
opposition to his colleagues?"]

On the subject of Jeanne's sincerity I have raised no doubts. It is
impossible to suspect her of lying; she firmly believed that she
received her mission from her voices. But whether she were not
unconsciously directed is more difficult to ascertain. What we know of
her before her arrival at Chinon comes to very little. One is inclined
to believe that she had been subject to certain influences; it is so
with all visionaries: some unseen director leads them. Thus it must
have been with Jeanne. At Vaucouleurs she was heard to say that the
Dauphin held the kingdom in fief (_en commende_).[86] Such a term she
had not learnt from the folk of her village. She uttered a prophecy
which she had not invented and which had obviously been fabricated for
her.

[Footnote 86: _Trial_, vol. ii, p. 456.]

She must have associated with priests who were faithful to the cause
of the Dauphin Charles, and who desired above all things the end of
the war. Abbeys were being burned, churches pillaged, divine service
discontinued.[87] Those pious persons who sighed for peace, now that
they saw the Treaty of Troyes failing to establish it, looked for the
realisation of their hopes to the expulsion of the English. And the
wonderful, the unique point about this young peasant girl--a point
suggesting the ecclesiastic and the monk--is not that she felt herself
called to ride forth and fight, but that in "her great pity" she
announced the approaching end of the war, by the victory and
coronation of the King, at a time when the nobles of the two
countries, and the men-at-arms of the two parties, neither expected
nor desired the war ever to come to an end.

[Footnote 87: Le P. Denifle, _La desolation des eglises, monasteres
hopitaux en France vers le milieu du xv'ieme siecle_, Macon, 1897,
in 8vo.]

The mission, with which she believed the angel had entrusted her and
to which she consecrated her life, was doub