Every French child of education knows something of the "_jeune et beau Dunois_"; every French child, educated or not, knows the story of Joan of Arc; Anglo-Saxon children may not invariably attain this knowledge, but they all know Gilles de Rais, though they never heard his name. Soon after his death, he passed into the realm of Legend, and under the title of Bluebeard he lives, and will live as long as there are children. Legend, that enchanting but inaccurate dame, gave him his seven wives; he had but one, and she survived him. His own name soon passed out of use. Even in the town of Nantes, where he met his death, the expiatory monument raised by Marie de Rais on the place of her father's torture was called "_le monument de Barbe-Bleue_." So, strangely enough, it is the children who keep alive the memory of their slayer. FOOTNOTES: [13] "Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, With many a foul and midnight murder fed, Revere his Consort's faith, his Father's fame, And spare the meek usurper's holy head!" --_Gray_, the Bard. [14] "Journal of a citizen of Paris." [15] "Journal of a Citizen of Paris." [16] Lt.-Col. A. C. P. Haggard, D. S. O. "The France of Joan of Arc." [17] Gilles de Rais. CHAPTER V THE VOICES Et eussiez-vous, Dangier, cent yeulx Assis et derrerière et devant, Ja n'yrez si près regardant Que vostre propos en soit mieulx. --_Charles d'Orléans._ In 1425, when Joan was in her fourteenth year, Domrémy had its first taste of actual war. Henry of Orly, a robber captain of the neighborhood, pounced upon the village with his band, so suddenly and swiftly that the people could not reach their island refuge. The robbers, more greedy than bloodthirsty, did not wait to slay, merely stripped the houses of everything worth carrying off, and "lifted" the cattle, as the Scots say, driving them some fifty miles to Orly's castle of Doulevant. The distressed villagers appealed to the lady of Bourlemont, who in turn called upon her kinsman Anthony of Vaudemont, a powerful noble of Lorraine. Cousin Anthony promptly sent men to recover the stolen cattle. Orly, resisting, was beaten off, and the beasts were brought back in safety to Domrémy, where the happy villagers received them with shouts of joy. The English were not directly responsible for this raid. Orly was a free-lance, robbing and harrying on his own account; Vaudemont was Anglo-Burgundian at heart. None the less, people, here as everywhere, were beginning to feel that war and trouble had come with the English, and that there could be no lasting peace or quiet while they trod the soil of France.