meaning by _that_ not myself, because, though certainly a better man than D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. If I lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either Friday must do all the darning, or else it must go undone. The better men that I meant were the sailors in the British navy, every man of whom mends his own stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are under articles to darn for the navy? The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of D'Arc is this. There was a story current in France before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and short rent rolls, viz., that a head of such a house, dating from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, a Chevalier of St. Louis, "_Chevalier, as-tu donné au cochon à manger_!" Now, it is clearly made out by the surviving evidence, that D'Arc would much have preferred continuing to say--"_Ma fille as-tu donné au cochon à manger_?" to saying "_Pucelle d'Orléans, as-tu sauvé les fleurs-de-lys_?" There is an old English copy of verses which argues thus:-- "If the man, that turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies-- Then 'tis plain the man had rather Have a turnip than his father." I cannot say that the logic of these verses was ever _entirely_ to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through it as clearly as could be wished. But I see my way most clearly through D'Arc; and the result is--that he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to his father, but the saving a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France. It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the title of Virgin, or _Pucelle_, had in itself, and apart from the miraculous stones about her, a secret power over the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period; for, in such a person, they saw a representative manifestation of the Virgin Mary, who, in a course of centuries, had grown steadily upon the popular heart.