The piety and devotion of the girl deepened into a fervid wonder of faith. She put aside the gayety of girlhood, and lived a simple, devout, tender life, helping her mother, obeying her father, and doing what she could for every one. It seemed to her that she was one set apart, subject to the Divine guidance. Nor did she tell any one of her experiences, but locked the Divine secret in her heart, showing forth the tenderness and gravity of one who bears great tidings. She became so good that all the village wondered at her, and loved her.
“Jeanne confesses oftener than any of you,” the Curé told his parishioners reprovingly. “When I celebrate mass I am sure that she will be present whether the rest of you are or not. Would that more of you were like her! Had she money she would give it to me to say masses.” The good man sighed. Money was not plentiful in Domremy.
But if she had not money the child gave what she had: flowers 76 for the altars, candles for the saints, and loving service to all about her. She was an apt pupil in the school of her saints, and learned well to be a good child before she conned the great lesson in store for her.
“Jeanne grows angelic,” Isabeau remarked complacently one day to Jacques. “There never was her like. So good, so obedient, she never gives me a bit of trouble. And what care she takes of her little sister! Catherine has been hard to attend this summer, so fretful and ailing as she is, but Jeanne can always quiet her. I know not what I should do without her. I am the envy of all the women in the village; for, they say, there is not another girl so good in the valley.”
But Jacques D’Arc frowned.
“Too quiet and staid is she for her age,” he remarked. “Have you marked, Isabeau, that she no longer dances with the other children? Nor does she romp, or play games with them. And the praying, and the church-going! There is too much of it for the child’s good.”
“Jacques!” exclaimed his wife in shocked tones. “How can you say that? The good Curé commends Jeanne for her devoutness. That can only do her good.”
“Then what is it?” demanded the father impatiently. “Could it be that some one is teaching the girl letters, that she is so quiet? Learning of that sort works harm to a lass.”
His wife shook her head emphatically.
“She knows not A from B, Jacques. Everything she knows is what she has learned from me. I have taught her the Credo, the Paternoster, the Ave Marie, and have told her stories of the saints: things that every well-taught child should know. 77 She is skilled, too, in housework. I have seen to that. And as for sewing and spinning, there is not her equal in this whole valley. There is naught amiss, Jacques. If there is, ’tis more likely the harm that she has received from tales of bloodshed which every passerby brings of the war. Often do I wish that we did not live on the highroad.” The good dame shook her head as she glanced through the open door of the cottage to the great road where even at that moment creaking wains were passing laden with the cloths of Ypres and Ghent.