As soon as she began to receive these revelations she gave up her games and her excursions. Henceforth she seldom danced round the fairies' tree, and then only in play with the children.[300] It would seem that she also took a dislike to working in the fields, and especially to herding the flocks. From early childhood she had shown signs of piety. Now she gave herself up to extreme devoutness; she confessed frequently, and communicated with ecstatic fervour; she heard mass in her parish church every day. At all hours she was to be found in church, sometimes prostrate on the ground, sometimes with her hands clasped, and her face turned towards the image of Our Lord or of Our Lady. She did not always wait for Saturday to visit the chapel at Bermont. Sometimes, when her parents thought she was tending the herds, she was kneeling at the feet of the miracle-working Virgin. The village priest, Messire Guillaume Frontey, could do nothing but praise the most guileless of his parishioners.[301] One day he happened to say with a sigh: "If Jeannette had money she would give it to me for the saying of masses."[302]
As for the good man, Jacques d'Arc, it is possible that he may have occasionally complained of those pilgrimages, those meditations, and those other practices which ill accorded with the ordinary tenor of country life. Every one thought Jeanne odd and erratic. Mengette and her friends, when they found her so devout, said she was too pious.[303] They scolded her for not dancing with them. Among others, Isabellette, the young wife of Gérardin d'Epinal, the mother of little Nicholas, Jeanne's godson, roundly condemned a girl who cared so little for dancing.[304] Colin, son of Jean Colin, and all the village lads made fun of her piety. Her fits of religious ecstasy raised a smile. She was regarded as a little mad. She suffered from this persistent raillery.[305] But with her own eyes she beheld the dwellers in Paradise. And when they left her she would cry and wish that they had taken her with them.
"Daughter of God, thou must leave thy village and go forth into France."[306]
And the ladies Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret spoke again and said: "Take the standard sent down to thee by the King of Heaven, take it boldly and God will help thee." As she listened to these words of the ladies with the beautiful crowns, Jeanne was consumed with a desire for long expeditions on horseback, and for those battles in which angels hover over the heads of the warriors. But how was she to go to France? How was she to associate with men-at-arms? Ignorant and generously impulsive like herself, the Voices she heard merely revealed to her her own heart, and left her in sad agitation of mind: "I am a poor girl, knowing neither how to bestride a horse nor how to make war."[307]
Jeanne's native village was named after the blessed Remi;[308] the parish church bore the name of the great apostle of the Gauls, who, in baptising King Clovis, had anointed with holy oil the first Christian prince of the noble House of France, descended from the noble King Priam of Troy.
Thus runs the legend of Saint Remi as it was told by churchmen. In those days the pious hermit Montan, who lived in the country of Laon, beheld a choir of angels and an assembly of saints; and he heard a voice full and sweet saying: "The Lord hath looked down upon the earth. That he might hear the groans of them that are in fetters: that he might release the children of the slain: that they may declare the name of the Lord in Sion: and his praise in Jerusalem. When the people assemble together, and kings to serve the Lord.[309] And Cilinia shall bring forth a son for the saving of the people."
Now Cilinia was old, and her husband Emilius was blind. Yet Cilinia, having conceived, brought forth a son; and with the milk with which she nourished her babe she rubbed the eyes of the father, and straightway his eyes were opened, and he saw.
This child, whose birth had been foretold by angels, was called Remi, which, being interpreted, means oar; for by his teaching, as with a well-cut oar, he was to guide the Church of God, and especially the church of Reims, over the stormy sea of life, and by his merits and his prayers bring it into the heaven of eternal salvation.
In retirement and in the practice of holy and Christian observances, Cilinia's son passed his pious youth at Laon. Hardly had he entered his twenty-second year, when the episcopal seat of Reims fell vacant on the death of the blessed Bishop Bennade. An immense concourse of people nominated Remi the shepherd of the flock. He refused a burden which he said was too heavy for the weakness of his youth. But suddenly there fell upon his forehead a ray of celestial light, and a divine liquid was shed upon his hair, and scented it with a strange perfume. Wherefore, without further delay, the bishops of the province of Reims, with one consent, consecrated him their bishop. Established in the seat of Saint Sixtus, the blessed Remi revealed himself liberal in almsgiving, assiduous in vigilance, fervent in prayer, perfect in charity, marvellous in doctrine, and holy in all his conversation. Like a city built on the top of a mountain, he was admired of all men.
In those days, Clovis, King of France, was a heathen, with all his knights. But he had won a great victory over the Germans by invoking the name of Christ. Wherefore, at the entreaty of the saintly Queen Clotilde, his wife, he resolved to ask baptism at the hands of the blessed Bishop of Reims. When this pious desire had been made known to him, Saint Remi taught the King and his subjects that, renouncing Satan and his pomps and his works, they must believe in God and in Jesus Christ his Son. And as the solemn festival of Easter was approaching, he commanded them to fast according to the custom of the faithful. On the day of the Passion of Our Lord, the eve of the day on which Clovis was to be baptised, early in the morning the Bishop went to the King and Queen and led them to an oratory dedicated to the blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles. Suddenly the chapel was filled with a light so brilliant that the sunshine became as shadow, and from the midst of this light there came a voice saying: "Peace be with you, it is I, fear not and abide in my love." After these words the light faded, but there remained in the chapel an odour of ineffable sweetness. Then, with his face shining like the countenance of Moses, and illuminated within by a divine brightness, the holy Bishop prophesied and said: "Clovis and Clotilde, your descendants shall set back the boundaries of the kingdom. They shall raise the church of Jesus Christ and triumph over foreign nations provided they fall not from virtue and depart not from the way of salvation, neither enter upon the sinful road leading to destruction and to those snares of deadly vices which overthrow empires and cause dominion to pass from one nation to another."