And this was Joan’s room—­a cell, with a narrow slit at the end through which one gained a glimpse of the church.  Before this slit she had often knelt while the angels drifted from the belfry like doves to peer in on her.  The place was sacred.  How many nights had she spent here with girlish folded hands, her face ecstatic, the cold eating into her tender body?  I see her blue for lack of charity, forgotten, unloved, neglected—­the symbol of misunderstanding and loneliness.  They told her she was mad.  She was a laughing stock in the village.  The world could find nothing better for her to do than driving sheep through the bitter woodlands; but God found time to send his angels.  Yes, she was mad—­mad as Christ was in Galilee—­mad enough to save others when she could not save herself.  How nearly the sacrifice of this most child-like of women parallels the sacrifice of the most God-like of men!  Both were born in a shepherd community; both forewent the humanity of love and parenthood; both gave up their lives that the world might be better; both were royally apparelled in mockery; both followed their visions; for each the price of following was death.  She, too, was despised and rejected; as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so she opened not her mouth.

That is all there is to see at Domremy; three starveling, stone-paved rooms, a crumbling church, a garden full of dead leaves, an old dog growing mangy in his kennel and the wind-swept cathedral of the woodlands.  The soul of France was born there in the humble body of a peasant-girl; yes, and more than the soul of France—­the gallantry of all womanhood.  God must be fond of His peasants; I think they will be His aristocracy in Heaven.

The old lady led us out of the house.  There was one more thing she wished to show us.  The sunset light was still in the tree-tops, but her eyes were dim; she thought that night had already gathered.  Holding her lamp above her head, she pointed to a statue in a niche above the doorway.  It had been placed there by order of the King of France after Joan was dead.  But it wasn’t so much the statue that she wanted us to look at; it was the mutilations that were upon it.  She was filled with a great trembling of indignation.  “Yes, gaze your fill upon it, Messieurs,” she said; “it was les Boches did that.  They were here in 1870.  To others she may be a saint, but to them—­Bah!” and she spat, “a woman is less than a woman always.”

When we turned to go she was still cursing les Boches beneath her breath, tremblingly holding up the lamp above her head that she might forget nothing of their defilement.  The old dog rattled his chain as we passed; he knew us now and did not trouble to come out.  The dead leaves whispered beneath our tread.

At the gate we halted.  I turned to my American soldier.  “How long before you go into the line?”

He was carrying the little French girl in his arms.  As he glanced up to answer, his face caught the sunset.  “Soon now.  The sooner, the better.  She ...,” and I knew he meant no living woman.  “This place ...  I don’t know how to express it.  But everything here makes you want to fight,—­makes you ashamed of standing idle.  If she could do that—­well, I guess that I....”