Jeanne D'Arc. Par Mgr. Le Nordez. (Hachette et Cie. 20
francs.)—" Legends are the smiles of history," says Mgr. Le Nordez at the beginning of this book, as a reason for including a great many of the traditions which cling round the Maid's personality. Almost every incident in her short career has been the subject of severe and conflicting criticism, from the examina- tion by the Churchmen after her first interview with the Dauphin at Chinon, down to the present day. Still, her individuality is powerful through it all, and she bears out the saying of Ibsen, that he is the strongest who stands most alone. From the age of thirteen she considered herself set apart by God and the saints to fulfil the prophecy that a maid from Lorraine should deliver France, and this belief was so strong that at seven- teen she left her village of Domremy, and after overcoming all obstacles, put herself at the head of the army, with the well- known results. Mgr. Le Nordez quotes a good deal from the reports of her trial ; and her answers to the questions as to the voices she heard, and how her supernatural knowledge came to her, are very simple and matter of fact, while they recall passages from the reports of the Psychical Society. The evidence of the villagers of Domremy at the rehabilitation trial, held about twenty-five years after her death, shows her as a hardworking peasant, rather grave, but End and practical. She seems to have been as much loved by her neighbours as she was afterwards by the soldiers. It is told of her that she would get off her horse in the middle of a fight to help the wounded English. She said of herself that she never killed any one, and she carried a banner, instead of a spear, into battle. There is an interesting letter from a young noble, Guy de Laval, to his mother, written at Tours when Jeanne was at her happiest time, telling how when
he and his brother drank wine with her, she told them that she would soon make them drink it in Paris. He goes on to describe her riding through the town on a black horse in white armour, bare-headed, and with a small battle-axe in her hand. There is no authentic portrait of Jeanne, but we have an immense number and variety of pictures and statues of her reproduced here, from the naturalistic Bastion Lepage, to the fantastic productions of the eighteenth century. There is a good reproduction of Ingres's " Jeanne d'Arc an Sacre de Charles VII." Grasset's lithograph of Jeanne in a company of men-at-arms is striking. In writing this book Mgr. Le Nordez has been led by enthusiasm for the heroine into a certain amount of over-emphasis and repetition.
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