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Jeanne's House 04 (L)

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4 THE HOUSE OF JOAN OF ARC IN DOMREMY

More fortunate than the eminent Prelate was then, I was given the opportunity to see Domremy, and to contemplate the very place where she was born and grew up, who, according to the expression of one of its last historians, summed up in herself in a marvelous way and carried to the heights of the supernatural order, the French patriotism of the end of the Middle Ages (1).
On August 25, 1884, from Plombières where I had stayed for a season, I headed for Neufchâteau, a charming little town, clean, pleasantly situated and above all well paved (Res miranda populo!)... The memory of Joan of Arc begins to reveal itself there to the eyes of the tourist. It was in this city, in fact, that the Maid had taken refuge with her family to escape the Burgundians who were advancing towards Domremy "preceded by the noise of their plunder and their violence (2)." Joan's father was received, he and his children, by an honest woman named la Rousse (3), who ran a sort of hostelry. They stayed there for a certain number of days during which Joan made herself as useful as she could. It was this circumstance that made Monstrelet, a Burgundian historian, say: "Which maid Joan was for a long time a chambermaid in an inn and was bold enough to ride horses and lead them to bed and also to make appertises that young girls are not accustomed to doing." An error shared by Etienne Pasquier, in his Research on the
(1) Marius Sepet, Jeanne d'Arc, Tours 1884, p. 1.
(2) Le Brun de Charmettes, History of Joan of Arc, Paris 1817, t. 1. p. 305.
(3) Interrogation of February 22, 1430.


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