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Come! A good whole holiday! Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle Aurore!'

That he asked and that he got, nothing

more.

Name and deed alike are lost:
Not a pillar nor a post

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell;
Not a head in white and black

On a single fishing smack,

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to wrack

All that France saved from the fight whence England bore the bell.

Go to Paris: rank on rank

Search the heroes flung pell-mell
On the Louvre, face and flank!

You shall look long enough ere you come to
Hervé Riel.

In

So, for better and for worse,

Hervé Riel, accept my verse!

my verse, Hervé Riel, do thou once more Save the squadron, honor France, love thy

wife the Belle Aurore!

ROBERT BROWNING.

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JOAN OF ARC

WHAT is to be thought of her?

What is

to be thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests of Lorraine, that like the Hebrew shepherd boy from the hills and forests of Judea rose suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous station at the right hand of kings? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious act, such as no man could deny.

But so did the girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore witness to the boy as no pretender; but so they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them from a station of good will, both were found true and loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that made the difference between their subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and a noonday prosperity, both

personal and public, that rang through the records of his people, and became a byword amongst his posterity for a thousand years, until the scepter was departing from Judah.

The poor, forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from that cup of rest which she secured for France. She never sang together with them the songs that rose in her native Domrémy, as echoes to the departing steps of invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Vaucouleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of France. No! for her voice was then silent :. no! for her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in, as full of truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest pledges for thy truth, that never once-no, not for a moment of weakness didst thou revel in the vision of coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee! O no! Honors, if they come when all is over, are for those that share thy blood.

Daughter of Domrémy, when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of

France, but she will not hear thee! Cite her by thy apparitors to come and receive a robe of honor, but she will be found en contumace. When the thunders of universal France, as even yet may happen, shall proclaim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to do, that was thy portion in this life; to do never for thyself, always for others; to suffer -- never in the persons of generous champions, always in thine own; that was thy destiny; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. Life, thou saidst, is short; and the sleep which is in the grave is long.

This poor creature pure from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, even as she was pure in senses more obvious - never once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from her belief in the darkness that was traveling to meet her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her death she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aërial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on every road pouring into

Rouen as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from artificial restraints;

these might not be apparent through the mists of the hurrying future. But the voice that called her to death, that she heard for

ever.

Great was the throne of France even in those days, and great was he that sat upon it; but well Joanna knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it was for her; but, on the contrary, that she was for them; not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for centuries had the privilege to spread their beauty over land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of God and man combined to wither them; but well Joanna knew, early at Domrémy she had read that bitter truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no garland for her!

of

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday, in 1431, being then about nineteen years age, the Maid of Arc underwent her martyr

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