The originality of the Maid of Orleans, and what determined her success, was not so much her valour or her visions as her good sense. Through all her enthusiasm, this daughter of the people saw the question clearly, and was able to solve it. She cut the knot which the politic and the men of little faith could not untie. She declared, in God’s name, that Charles VII was the true heir, and she set him at ease as to his legitimacy, of which he himself had doubts. That legitimacy she sanctified, taking her king straight to Rheims, and gaining over the English, by the celerity of her movements, the decisive advantage of the coronation. It was at Domrémy, just between Lorraine of the Vosges and that of the plain, between Lorraine and Champagne, that the beautiful and brave girl was born, who was to wield the sword of France so well. Joan or Jeanne was the third daughter of a peasant, Jacques Darc,[41] and of Isabella of Romée. She had two godmothers, one of whom was named Jeanne, the other Sibylle. The eldest son having been named James (Jacques), another Peter (Pierre), the pious parents gave one of their daughters the more exalted name of St. John (Jean). Whilst the other children accompanied their father in his field work or tended cattle, the mother kept Joan at home for sewing or spinning. She did not learn to read or write, but she knew all her mother could teach her of sacred things. She acquired religion, not as a lesson or a ceremony, but in the homely popular form of a winter night’s tale, as the simple faith of a mother. Everybody knew her charity and her piety. They saw clearly she was the best girl in the village. What they did not know was that in her the life from above always absorbed the other life, and suppressed all vulgar development. Hers was the divine gift to remain a child in soul and body. She grew up, became strong and comely, but never knew the physical miseries of her sex. They were spared her, to the advantage of her mental growth and religious inspiration.