4. A shepherd maid she was--a tiny thing, barefooted, bare-headed--such as you may see running wild and innocent, less cared for now than their sheep, over many a hillside of France and Italy. Tiny enough;--seven years old, all told, when first one hears of her: "Seven times one are seven, (I am old, you may trust me, linnet, linnet[10])," and all around her--fierce as the Furies, and wild as the winds of heaven--the thunder of the Gothic armies, reverberate over the ruins of the world. 5. Two leagues from Paris, (_Roman_ Paris, soon to pass away with Rome herself,) the little thing keeps her flock, not even her own, nor her father's flock, like David; she is the hired servant of a richer farmer of Nanterre. Who can tell me anything about Nanterre?--which of our pilgrims of this omni-speculant, omni-nescient age has thought of visiting what shrine may be there? I don't know even on what side of Paris it lies,[11] nor under which heap of railway cinders and iron one is to conceive the sheep-walks and blossomed fields of fairy St. Phyllis. There were such left, even in my time, between Paris and St. Denis, (see the prettiest chapter in all the "Mysteries of Paris," where Fleur de Marie runs wild in them for the first time), but now, I suppose, St. Phyllis's native earth is all thrown up into bastion and glacis, (profitable and blessed of all saints, and her, as _these_ have since proved themselves!) or else are covered with manufactories and cabarets. Seven years old she was, then, when on his way to _England_ from Auxerre, St. Germain passed a night in her village, and among the children who brought him on his way in the morning in more kindly manner than Elisha's convoy, noticed this one--wider-eyed in reverence than the rest; drew her to him, questioned her, and was sweetly answered: That she would fain be Christ's handmaid. And he hung round her neck a small copper coin, marked with the cross. Thencefoward Genevieve held herself as "separated from the world." [Footnote 10: Miss Ingelow.] [Footnote 11: On inquiry, I find in the flat between Paris and Sevres.] 6. It did not turn out so, however. Far the contrary. You must think of her, instead, as the first of Parisiennes. Queen of Vanity Fair, that was to be, sedately poor St. Phyllis, with her copper-crossed farthing about her neck! More than Nitocris was to Egypt, more than Semiramis to Nineveh, more than Zenobia to the city of palm trees--this seven-years-old shepherd maiden became to Paris and her France. You have not heard of her in that kind?--No: how should you?--for she did not lead armies, but stayed them, and all her power was in peace.