and the most famous woman in France, the life of Jeanne, the Deliverer of her country, is as the life of Jeanne, the cottage sempstress,—­as simple, as devout, and as pure.  She loved to go to church for the early matins, but as it was not fit that she should go out alone at that hour, she besought Madame Marguerite to go with her.  In the evening she went to the nearest church, and there with all her old childish love for the church bells, she had them rung for half an hour, calling together the poor, the beggars who haunt every Catholic church, the poor friars and bedesmen, the penniless and forlorn from all the neighbourhood.  This custom would, no doubt, soon become known, and not only her poor pensioners, but the general crowd would gather to gaze at the Maid as well as to join in her prayers.  It was her great pleasure to sing a hymn to the Virgin, probably one of the litanies which the unlearned worshipper loves, with its choruses and constant repetitions, in company with all those untutored voices, in the dimness of the church, while the twilight sank into night, and the twinkling stars of candles on the altar made a radiance in the middle of the gloom.  When she had money to give she divided it, according to the liberal custom of her time, among her poor fellow-worshippers.  These evening services were her recreation.  The days were full of business, of enrolling soldiers, and regulating the “lances,” groups of retainers, headed by their lord, who came to perform their feudal service.

The ladies of the town who had the advantage of knowing Madame Marguerite did not fail to avail themselves of this privilege, and thronged to visit her wonderful guest.  They brought her their sacred medals and rosaries to bless, and asked her a hundred questions.  Was she afraid of being wounded; or was she assured that she would not be wounded?  “No more than others,” she said; and she put away their religious ornaments with a smile, bidding Madame Marguerite touch them, or the visitors themselves, which would be just as good as if she did it.  She would seem to have been always smiling, friendly, checking with a laugh the adulation of her visitors, many of whom wore medals with her own effigy (if only one had been saved for us!) as there were many banners made after the pattern of hers.  But cheerful as she was, a prevailing tone of sadness now appears to run through her life.  On several occasions she spoke to her confessor and chaplain, who attended her everywhere, of her death.  “If it should be my fate to die soon, tell the King our master on my part to build chapels where prayer may be made to the Most High for the salvation of the souls of those who shall die in the wars for the defence of the kingdom.”  This was the one thing she seemed anxious for, and it returned again and again to her mind.  Her thoughts indeed were heavy enough.  Her larger enterprises had been cruelly put a stop to:  her companions-in-arms had been dispersed:  she had