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Updated: July 7, 2025
The politicians and courtiers, especially the most trusted of them, George de la Tremoille, the king's favorite, shrugged their shoulders. What could be expected from the dreams of a young peasant-girl of nineteen?
That is all there is to see at Domrémy; three starveling, stone-paved rooms, a crumbling church, a garden full of dead leaves, an old dog growing mangy in his kennel and the wind-swept cathedral of the woodlands. The soul of France was born there in the humble body of a peasant-girl; yes, and more than the soul of France the gallantry of all womanhood.
"Don't at all events describe this pettifogging, miserable existence which stares us in the face without the medium of art. Our contemporary literature squeezes every worm, every peasant-girl, and I don't know what else, into the novel. Choose a historical subject, worthy of your vivacious imagination and your clean-cut style. Do you remember how you used to write of old Russia?
One lovely summer evening, as they sat together on a shady lawn shaped like a star, from which radiated twelve splendid avenues of trees, the Queen looked round and saw a charming peasant-girl approaching by each path, and what was still more singular was that everyone carried something in a basket which appeared to occupy her whole attention.
Young men go from Rotterdam to Gouda, where they buy very long clay pipes, and return to Rotterdam carrying them unbroken in their hands. Sometimes as one is walking along a canal one sees a figure flit by like an arrow, to disappear immediately in the distance. It is a peasant-girl carrying milk to a house in the city.
Every rank and quality of both sexes might be seen in these wretched dens, gentle and simple, priest and laic, merchant and artisan, lady and peasant-girl, some hopeful of ransom, others despairing ever to be free again.
And that was natural enough; for who would expect that an ignorant peasant-girl of sixteen would be otherwise than frightened and tongue-tied when standing for the first time in presence of the practised doctors of the law, and surrounded by the cold solemnities of a court? Yet all these people were mistaken.
The emperor still gazed upon her wonderful beauty, and thought that nothing he had ever seen in gilded halls could approach this peasant-girl, whose red dress and black bodice were more dazzling to his eyes than the laces and diamonds of all Vienna assembled. "Where," asked he, observing that her snowy shoulders were bare, "where did you get a kerchief to bathe my head?"
"Ah!" cried Pen excitedly, as he started up and made for the door, for there was the rustling sound of feet amongst the bushes; and directly after, hot and panting with exertion, the peasant-girl appeared at the opening that was growing dim in the failing light.
The obedient pigeons did so, flying day and night till they reached the city gates; when the queen dismissed them with a sweet kiss, which was worth more than her crown. How her heart beat as she entered, and begged to see the king! "You!" cried the servants mocking. "Little peasant-girl, your eyes are not half good enough to see the king.
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