"Didn't the French people want to have the English king to be theirs too, grandma?" asked Elsie.
"No, indeed! and so a long, long war followed, and a great many of both the French and English were killed.
"At that time there was a young peasant girl named Joan, a modest, industrious, pious girl, who loved her country and was distressed over the dreadful war going on in it. She longed to help to drive the English away; but it did not seem as if she—a girl of fifteen, who could neither read nor write, though she could sew and spin and work out in the fields and gardens—could do anything to help to rid her dear land of the invaders. But she thought a great deal about it and at length imagined that she heard heavenly voices calling to her to go and fight for her king."
"And that was the picture that we saw to-day, grandma?" asked Elsie. "But it wasn't really true?"
"No, dear; probably Joan of Arc, as she is called, really imagined she heard them, and the painter has imagined how they might have looked."
"Then it isn't real," remarked the little girl, in a tone of disappointment.
"No, not what the picture represents; but the story of what poor Joan of Arc, or the Maid of Orleans, as she is often called, thought and did is true. When she told her story of the voices speaking to her no one believed it; they thought she was crazy. But she was not discouraged. She went to her king, or rather the dauphin, for he had not been crowned, and told her story to him and his council—that God had revealed to her that the French troops would succeed in driving the enemy away from the city of Orleans, which they were besieging at that time.
"The dauphin listened, believed what she told him, and gave her leave to dress herself in male attire and go with the troops, riding on a white palfrey and bearing a sword and a white banner. The soldiers believed in her, and in consequence were filled with such courage and enthusiasm that they fought very bravely and soon succeeded in driving the English away from Orleans.
"This success so delighted the French, and so raised their hope of ridding France of her enemies, that they won victory after victory, driving the English out of one province after another, and even out of Paris itself, so that the English hated and dreaded poor Joan.