The death of a great Queen deeply affects men and women everywhere. Isabelle’s name, like that of “good Queen Yolande,” had become a household word in Europe far and wide. Everywhere tokens of bereavement were displayed, and King René, the royal widower, hastening home too late to close his fond wife’s eyes in death, wrote in his tablets: “Since the life of my dear, dear wife has been cut off by death, my heart has lost its love, for she was the mainspring of my consolations.” In every one of his “_Livres des Heures_,” and in other books and places, the artist in the Sovereign painted and drew the features and the figure of his Queen.
Their married life,--chequered as it had been,--had been as happy as could be. Devoted to one another with a rare force of faithfulness which knew no flaw, René and Isabelle were examples for their generation. No stone has ever been cast at either of them. Nine children were born to them: four, Charles, René, Anne, and Isabelle, died in infancy; Nicholas, their third son, was a twin with Yolande, born in 1428; he had the title of Duke of Bar, but died before his majority. Good Queen Isabelle was buried in the Cathedral of Angers, where nearly forty years later René’s bones were laid beside her ashes, to mingle in the common decay till the last trump shall sound to wake the dead.
There cannot be a better summing up of her gifts, her graces and her virtues than in the words of the sententious life’s motto she herself composed, and wrote in golden letters upon parchment, and gave to each of her dear children:
“Si l’Amour fault, la Foy n’est plus chérie; Si Foy périt, l’Amour s’en va périe; Pour ce, les ay en devise liez Amour et Foy.”
“If Love fails, Faith becomes more precious; If Faith perishes, Love dies too; Whence Love and Faith together are my device.”
JEANNE D’ARC--“LA PUCELLE,” “LA BLANCHE REINE DE FRANCE”
“Give me Duke René de Barrois, the noble son of good Queen Yolande, to guide me into France.” The request was made by a simple village maiden aged not more than seventeen years, and the personage she addressed was Charles II., Duke of Lorraine. It was an extraordinary request; the occasion, too, was extraordinary.
Born on the Feast of the Epiphany in the year 1412, of worthy peasants, at Domremy, in Alsace,--Jacques d’Arc and Isabelle Romée, his wife,--Jeanne was the younger of their two daughters; she had three brothers older than herself. Domremy was a squalid little hamlet, like many another upon the Meuse, boasting of the mother-church of the commune--a grim old building, but glorified by many figures of holy saints in its coloured windows. The nearest village was Maxey, upon the borders of Lorraine. The villagers were in constant feud--Domremy for the King of France and her own Duke at Nancy, Maxey for the Duke of Burgundy and the hated English. Sieur Jacques d’Arc and his three stalwart, hard-working sons were as ready with the pike as they were handy with the plough. Mère Isabelle and her two daughters were zealous backers of their menfolk.