w a level of taste and
education as the pillage by Barere and his copper 'Syndicate' of the
historic tombs of France at St.-Denis in 1793.

Some years ago all France was incensed by a nocturnal desecration of the
statue of Duguesclin which stands at Dinan in the very lists in which
five hundred years ago the Breton hero met and vanquished 'Sir Thomas of
Canterbury.' The indignation of France was righteous, and if there was
any foundation for the popular impression that the outrage was
perpetrated by some English lads on a vacation tour, no language could
well be too strong to apply to it. But I did not observe that any
Parisian journalist alluded at that time to the way in which the ashes
of Duguesclin himself were treated in 1795 at St.-Denis, by Frenchmen
decked in tri-coloured scarves! It did not even occur to them to
remember how long ago and by what hands the column of the Grand Army was
pulled down in the very heart of Paris!

While the force of Philistine fatuity can no further go than it has gone
in the 'laicization' of the home of Jeanne d'Arc, I ought to say that
the actual keeper of the place seemed to me to be a decent sort of
fellow, not wholly destitute of respect for its traditions and its
significance. The house and the garden are neatly kept. In the centre of
the main room stands a fine model in bronze of the well-known statue of
Jeanne d'Arc, by the Princess Mary of Orleans, with an inscription
stating that it was given by the King, her father, to the Department of
the Vosges, to be placed in the house where Jeanne was born.
Commemorative tablets are set here and there in the walls; and in one of
the modern buildings in front of the house a collection is kept of
objects illustrating the life of the Pucelle.

The most interesting of these is a banner given by General de Charette,
to the valour of whose Zouaves the French are indebted for one of the
few gleams of victory which brighten up the dark record of 1870 It was
at Patay that in June 1429 the English, under Sir John Fastolf, for the
first time broke in a stricken field and fled under the onset of the
French, led by the Maid of Orleans, leaving the great Talbot to fall a
prisoner into the hands of his enemies. And at Patay, again in December
1870, the German advance was met and repulsed by the 'Volunteers of the
West,' that being the name under which the silly and intolerant
'Government of the National Defence' actually compelled the Catholic
Zo