A year’s captivity and cruelty, harsh and revolting, found the spotless, unselfish, and pious “Maid of Orléans” in her twentieth year--alas! so young to die--a human wreck; but, mercifully, an end was put to her sufferings at Rouen on May 30, 1431. Burnt to death in the market-place,--calling upon Jesus, Mary, Michael, Catherine, and Margaret,--her fiendish murderers hardly allowed the fire to cool before they raked up her poor grey ashes, and then cast them with maledictions into the swirling Seine. So perished Jeanne d’Arc, the child of God, the deliverer of her country. Now her place is among the saints: she is St. Jeanne d’Arc.
It was said that her heart was found intact after the fire had burnt itself out, and that as one stooped to pick it up a white dove fluttered before his face!
Ill news travels apace. René de Bar et Lorraine heard of the tragedy at Rouen, and was broken-hearted. He dismissed his captains, his courtiers, and his minstrels, and shut himself up in his castle at Clermont, where he chided his soul with tears and fastings. His was the bitter cry: “_Ma Royne blanche, Jeanne, est mort--helas! ma Royne est mort!_”
The heart, too, of Charles, the King, reproached him before he died; he could never really have forgotten La Pucelle. A little girl was born to him and Queen Marie six months after Jeanne’s martyrdom; her name was “_Jeanne_,” as he said, “_en reconnaissance et pour mes péchés_.”
In the Register of Taxes the space against Domremy was left vacant until the great revolution, except for the entry: “_Néant, à cause de la Pucelle_.” Her parents’ cottage is still preserved, although the Bois Chènus is no more. The memory of Jeanne d’Arc will never die.
MARIE D’ANJOU--“LA PETITE REINE DE BOURGES”
“The little Queen of Bourges,”--so called partly in derision, partly in pity,--but all the same one of the noblest and best Queens who ever shared the sovereign throne of France: “noble,” not so much in gradation of rank as in distinction of character; “best,” or “good,” not in the sense of mock righteousness, but in the interpretation of whole-heartedness.
Marie d’Anjou was the eldest daughter of King Louis II. and Queen Yolande of Sicily-Anjou-Naples-Provence. Born at Angers, October 14, 1404, she and her younger brother, René, four years her junior, grew up to love one another almost distractedly. So intense was this fraternal affection that their solicitous and resourceful mother viewed it with apprehension, fearing its consequences,--if left unchecked or undiverted into a more natural channel,--the cloister. It was no part of the excellent training the Queen provided for her offspring to hide their futures under the garb of religion; she had lofty ambitions for all her children, and those ambitions she lived to see realized.