Joanna,
therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, would be led
continually to brood over the political condition of her country by the
traditions of the past no less than by the mementoes of the local
present.
M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a shepherdess. I beg
his pardon; she was. What he rests upon I guess pretty well: it is the
evidence of a woman called Haumette, the most confidential friend of
Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good girl, and I like her;
for she makes a natural and affectionate report of Joanna's ordinary
life. But still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is
better; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls herself in the
Latin report _Bergereta_. Even Haumette confesses that Joanna
tended sheep in her girlhood. And I believe that, if Miss Haumette were
taking coffee along with me this very evening (February 12, 1847)--in
which there would be no subject for scandal or for maiden blushes,
because I am an intense philosopher, and Miss H. would be hard upon 450
years old--she would admit the following comment upon her evidence to
be right. A Frenchman, about forty years ago--M. Simond, in his
"Travels"--mentions accidentally the following hideous scene as one
steadily observed and watched by himself in chivalrous France not very
long before the French Revolution: A peasant was plowing; and the team
that drew his plow was a donkey and a woman.
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