Baffled and discouraged, Joan went home with her uncle. But the Voices kept saying in her ears, “Go! go!” Back to the governor she went, but he treated her as badly as before. Then they found another man to whom she told her story and added, “God in Heaven has told me to go to the Dauphin; with His help I must do it, even if I have to go on my knees.” This friendly gentleman was deeply touched by her earnest words.
The people in the country who knew and believed in Joan of Arc pleaded with the men of influence in the neighborhood, and it was at last arranged that Joan should go and tell her story to the young king of France. To see if God were guiding her, as she claimed, the king changed places with a noble in his court; but instead of going up to the pretended king who sat in the seat of honor, Joan walked straight to the prince, where he stood behind some men of the court.
It is easy to believe what we will. The Dauphin listened to the burning words of the peasant girl with the pure,
Madonna-like face. After she had won the king’s approval it was not so hard for Joan to go on obeying the Voices. Dressed in a suit of armor which shone like silver, she led a French army to the relief of Orleans. She carried everywhere a beautiful white banner, embroidered with lilies.
The English laughed at that silly girl trying to be a man, and called her insulting names; but Joan did not mind, for she felt safe under the protection of the saints in heaven. One day, in an attack upon a fort held by the English, the Maid, as the French army now called her, was wounded in the foot; but she would not stop fighting. She mounted her horse again and led the charge as though nothing had happened. The English then thought she was a witch—that is, a woman working for the devil.
In another battle an arrow was shot clear through her shoulder so that the barb stuck out five inches. Then the enemy raised a shout of triumph. “The Maid can be wounded and killed,” they yelled. “She is not a witch, so we are not afraid of her.” But one of Joan’s company pulled out the arrow and she led them fiercely in the assault. The English soldiers were frightened, for in those days every one believed in witches. Joan drove the enemy from one place to another until all the south country was cleared of the English forces. Then the Maid of Orleans, as she was now called, led the king, with his court and the French army, to the old city of Rheims, where he was crowned, with great joy and splendor, as Charles the Seventh.
The Maid had put the lilies on her banner as the symbol of purity and of God’s love and care over France. The French lily, or fleur-de-lys, has been the emblem of France through all the centuries since the days of Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans.
Now the Maid, who had done all that the Voices had commanded, was ready to return home to spin and to tend the sheep on the hills of Domremy; but weak-hearted King Charles begged her to stay long enough to drive all the English out of France.
Against her wish, Joan yielded. While fighting outside the walls of a town not far from Paris, she was surrounded by armed men of the enemy. By mistake or through fear, some French people shut the gate in such haste that the Maid was left outside fighting a dozen soldiers single-handed. She was captured and put in a dark, damp prison. Here the poor girl, then only nineteen, was frightened and tortured to make her sign a paper confessing that she was a wicked witch, and that all she had done was by the help of the devil.
After waiting a long time in vain for the ungrateful prince, whom she had made king of France, to come and save her with his army, or to pay a large sum of money to ransom her, she was compelled to stand an unjust trial during which she was many times abused and insulted. This wicked trial was conducted by a false bishop, who condemned that sweet, heroic young girl to be burned at the stake in the market-place of Rouen on the 24th of May, 1431.
Twenty-five years after her death the Pope reversed the decision of the corrupt bishop. In 1920, nearly five hundred years after the Maid was burned to death, high and holy men in the ancient Church to which she belonged took the great step of declaring Joan of Arc, the peasant girl of Domremy, one of the noble army of martyrs in the communion of saints.
FOUR LEADERS IN THE OLD WORLD
SHAKESPEARE, THE GREATEST MAKER OF PLAYS
PERHAPS there is no one who has done so much for the world, yet about whose life so little is known, as William Shakespeare. His father was a farmer and market man, and his mother was Mary Arden, a prosperous farmer’s daughter. The father was so highly respected that he was made high bailiff, or mayor, of Stratford-upon-Avon, where the Shakespeare family lived.
It was one of the father’s duties to give out licenses to players or actors who went from town to town performing their plays. Sometimes they gave their shows out of doors; and when theaters were built they were galleries around a space of ground. The people who paid the most stood or sat in the galleries and the poor people saw the play from the ground, called the pit. Strolling players were looked upon in those days almost as tramps are to-day. They had to have licenses like street bands nowadays. They often gave their shows in a town square and took up a collection for their pay.
John Shakespeare was fond of these shows, and there is no doubt that his son William was taken to see them before he went to the Stratford Grammar School when he was seven years old. Here the boy is said to have studied Latin, writing, and arithmetic. Judging from the specimens that are still to be seen of William Shakespeare’s penmanship, it was not a great success. One of the great
play-writers of Shakespeare’s time wrote that Will had learned “small Latin and less Greek” at school. But Latin was the chief study in the schools of that time. It was sung and spoken in church, and it was thought necessary for even a farmer’s son to study that language.
When William was thirteen his father was unfortunate in business, and the boy had to leave school to earn his living. There is a legend that he started in to learn the butcher’s trade, but it seems more likely that he worked as a lawyer’s boy and clerk. If all accounts are true, he must have been a mischievous lad, for the story goes that he was once taken up for poaching, or shooting a deer, in the park of one of the great men in the county.
When he was eighteen Will Shakespeare married a farmer’s daughter eight years older than himself. By the time he was twenty-one the young father had three children. Two of these, Hamnet and Judith, were twins. Hamnet died before he grew to manhood, and about all that is known of Judith Shakespeare is that she, like her mother, never learned to read. It was not thought necessary then for farmers’ wives and daughters to read and write.
A lawyer’s clerk with five mouths to feed could hardly find enough to do in Stratford to earn a living, so William Shakespeare went to London to seek his fortune. It is said that he began life in the great city by holding