Joan was not in any way a great woman, but we feel that there must have been something uncommon about her beauty and her charm for the memory of it to have lasted as it did. It was some time after her death that the name of the Fair Maid of Kent was given her. She is an example of the great lady of those days, kindly, generous, loving brave men, trying to promote peace and kindliness, but extravagant and pleasure-seeking. No evil is told of her, and she seems to have loved both her husbands dearly and to have won their love in return. [Illustration: KNIGHTS JOUSTING.] III JEANNE D’ARC, THE MAID OF FRANCE ON January 6, probably in the year 1412, Jeanne d’Arc was born in Domremy, a little village in Lorraine, the great duchy which lies on the eastern frontier of France. Jeanne’s father was a hard-working peasant. He owned horses and cattle and was one of the most respected inhabitants of his village. There were no village schools in those days and Jeanne never learnt to read and write. Her mother taught her the creed and her prayers, as well as sewing and the work about the house. Like other peasant girls she ploughed and worked in the fields and took care of the cattle. She played with the other children, and used to dance and weave garlands with them. Best of all she loved to go into the little church and pray, so that sometimes the other children laughed at her for her piety. She used to nurse the sick, and would even lie all night upon the hearth in order to give up her bed to some poor person. France was at that time in a very troubled state. The whole land was divided into two parties, the Burgundians and the Armagnacs. The Burgundians had made friends with the English, who under Henry V. had conquered great part of France. Henry V. was dead, but his little son, Henry VI., had been crowned King of France, and his uncle, the Duke of Bedford, held Paris and many other towns in the north of France for him. The true King of France, Charles VII., had not been crowned yet, and many people still called him the Dauphin, the name by which the eldest son of the King of France used to be called. He was quite young, of a slow and lazy disposition, and had lost heart, and did not know how to meet the difficulties which surrounded him. News of the sad state of France must often have reached Domremy, brought by travellers of all kinds, pedlars, pilgrims, and wandering friars, who carried the news in those days as the newspapers do now.