“And she said, that day,’ Oh, why can I not die here?’” said Jacqueline, with a low voice.

“And when the Archbishop asked her,” continued Victor, “’Where do you, then, expect to die?’ she answered, ’I know not.  I shall die where God pleases.  I have done what the Lord my God commanded me; and I wish that He would now send me to keep my sheep with my mother and sister.’”

“Because she loved Domremy, and her work was done,” said Jacqueline, sadly.  “And so many hated her!  But her mother would be sure to love.  Jeanne would never see an evil eye in Domremy, and no one would lie in wait to kill her in the Vosges woods.”

“It was such as you, Jacqueline, who believed in her, and comforted her.  And to every one that consoled her Christ will surely say, ’Ye blessed of my Father, ye did it unto me!’ Yes, to be sure, there were too many who stood ready to kill her in all France,—­besides those who were afraid of her, and fought against our armies.  Even when they were taking her to see the Dauphin, the guard would have drowned her, and lied about it, but they were restrained.  It is something to have been born in Domremy,—­to have grown up in the very place where she used to play, a happy little girl.  You have seen that fountain, and heard the bells she loved so much.  It was good for you, I know.”

“Her prayers were everywhere,” Jacqueline replied.  “Everywhere she heard the voices that called her to come and deliver France.  But her father did not believe in her.  He persecuted Jeanne.”

“A man’s foes are of his own household,” said Victor.  “You see the same thing now.  It is the very family of Christ—­yes! so they dare call it—­who are going to tear and rend Leclerc to-morrow for believing the words of Christ.  A hundred judges settled that Jeanne should be burned; and for believing such words as are in these books”—­

“Read me those words,” said Jacqueline.

So they turned from speaking of Joan and her work, to contemplate another style of heroism, and to question their own hearts.

Jacqueline Gabrie had lived through eighteen years of hardship and exposure.  She was strong, contented, resolute.  Left to herself, she would probably have suffered no disturbance of her creed,—­would have lived and died conforming to the letter of its law.  But thrown under the influence of those who did agitate the subject, she was brave and clear-headed.  She listened now, while, according to her wish, her neighbor read,—­listened with clear intelligence, intent on the truth.  That, or any truth, accepted, she would hardly shrink from whatever it involved.  This was the reason why she had really feared to ask the Holy Ghost’s enlightenment!  So well she understood herself!  Truth was truth, and, if received, to be abided by.  She could not hold it loosely.  She could not trifle with it.  She was born in Domremy.  She had played under the Fairy Oak.  She knew the woods where Joan wandered when she sought her saintly solitude.  The fact was acting on her as an inspiration, when Domremy became a memory, when she labored far away from the wooded Vosges and the meadows of Lorraine.