Michelet will have her to be a _Champenoise_, and for no
better reason than that she "took after her father," who happened to be
a _Champenois_.
These disputes, however, turn on refinements too nice. Domremy stood
upon the frontiers, and, like other frontiers, produced a _mixed_
race, representing the _cis_ and the _trans_. A river (it is
true) formed the boundary line at this point--the river Meuse; and
_that_, in old days, might have divided the populations; but in
these days it did not; there were bridges, there were ferries, and
weddings crossed from the right bank to the left. Here lay two great
roads, not so much for travellers that were few, as for armies that
were too many by half. These two roads, one of which was the great
highroad between France and Germany, _decussated_ at this very
point; which is a learned way of saying that they formed a St. Andrew's
Cross, or letter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large X;
in which case the point of intersection, the _locus_ of conflux and
intersection for these four diverging arms, will finish the reader's
geographical education, by showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was
that Domremy stood. These roads, so grandly situated, as great trunk
arteries between two mighty realms,[Footnote: And reminding one of that
inscription, so justly admired by Paul Richter, which a Russian Czarina
placed on a guide-post near Moscow: _This is the road that leads to
Constantinople.
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