JEANNE D'ARC

Page 14. In 1801 appeared the romantic tragedy of The Maid of Orléans, in which Schiller portrayed the spirit of an âge prepared to accept the supernatural agency of his heroine. With him Jeanne D'Arc is the pure-souled and patriotic représentative of her people, endowed with divine power to défend and liberate her country.

Jeanne D'Arc was born in 1412 in the village of Domrémy. Her parents were respectable peasants. She was taught like other young women of her station to sew and spin, but not to read and write.

A prophecy of Merlin was current in her country to the effect that France was to be delivered by a virgin out of the forest of Domrémy. Knowledge of this prophecy, together with the conviction inspired by divine voices which spoke to her in visions, excited in her heroic soûl an ardor which aroused the enthusiasm of the nation. The English were overcome and fnially driven from France, but not before " The IMaid of Orléans " had suffered martyrdom. She was captured while defending Compiègne against the Duke of Burgundy, and sold to the English for the sum of 16,000 francs. She was condemned to die at the stake, and was burned at Rouen in May, 1431.

The English writer De Quincey in his vivid description of her trial and exécution says : " Never, from the f oundation of the earth, was there such a trial as this, if it were laid open in ail its beauty of defence, and ail its malignity of attack. O, child of France, shepherdess, peasant girl ! trodden under foot by ail around thee, how I honor thy flashing intellect — quick as the hghtning, and as true to its mark, — that ran before France and laggard Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of falsehood."

I. Le démon de la raillerie t'a traînée dans la poussière: The démon of ridicule lias dragged thee in the diist, has référence to Voltaire in his La Pue elle.

15. Momus was, according to Greek mythology, a god personifying censure and mockery. Nothing found favor in his sight. Even Venus he censured for the noise made by her golden sandals. He was finally driven from Olympus.