There would seem to have been no one of more importance in Domremy than Jacques d’Arc himself and his wife, respectable peasants, with a little money, a considerable rural property in flocks and herds and pastures, and a good reputation among their kind.  He had three sons working with their father in the peaceful routine of the fields; and two daughters, of whom some authorities indicate Jeanne as the younger, and some as the elder.  The cottage interior, however, appears more clearly to us than the outward aspect of the family life.  The daughters were not, like the children of poorer peasants, brought up to the rude outdoor labours of the little farm.  Painters have represented Jeanne as keeping her father’s sheep, and even the early witnesses say the same; but it is contradicted by herself, who ought to know best—­(except in taking her turn to herd them into a place of safety on an alarm).  If she followed the flocks to the fields, it must have been, she says, in her childhood, and she has no recollection of it.  Hers was a more sheltered and safer lot.  The girls were brought up by their mother indoors in all the labours of housewifery, but also in the delicate art of needlework, so much more exquisite in those days than now.  Perhaps Isabeau, the mistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps some ancient privilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for the altar, and church vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what had been Church lands.  At all events this, and other kindred works of the needle, seems to have been the chief occupation to which Jeanne was brought up.

The education of this humble house seems to have come entirely from the mother.  It was natural that the children should not know A from B, as Jeanne afterward said; but no one did, probably, in the village nor even on much higher levels than that occupied by the family of Jacques d’Arc.  But the children at their mother’s knee learned the Credo, they learned the simple universal prayers which are common to the wisest and simplest, which no great savant or poet could improve, and no child fail to understand:  “Our Father, which art in Heaven,” and that “Hail, Mary, full of grace,” which the world in that day put next.  These were the alphabet of life to the little Champagnards in their rough woollen frocks and clattering sabots; and when the house had been set in order,—­a house not without comfort, with its big wooden presses full of linen, and the pot au feu hung over the cheerful fire,—­came the real work, perhaps embroideries for the Church, perhaps only good stout shirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the boys, and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women.  “Asked if she had learned any art or trade, said:  Yes, that her mother had taught her to sew and spin, and so well, that she did not think any woman in Rouen could teach her anything.”  When the lady in the ballad makes her conditions with the peasant woman who is to bring up her boy, her “gay goss hawk,” and have him trained in the use of sword and lance, she undertakes to teach the “turtle-doo,” the woman child substituted for him, “to lay gold with her hand.”  No doubt Isabeau’s child learned this difficult and dainty art, and how to do the beautiful and delicate embroidery which fills the treasuries of the old churches.