[Footnote 108: Aug. Vallet, _Observation sur l'ancien monument erige a Orleans_, Paris, 1858, in 8vo.] [Footnote 109: See a curious project for the decoration of the platform of the Pont-Neuf addressed to Louis XIV (B.N.V., p. zz'338, in fol.). A Sieur Dupuis, Aide des Ceremonies, proposes that thereon shall be erected statues to "those great and illustrious captains who from reign to reign have valiantly maintained the dignity of the crown.... Artus of Bretagne, Constable, Jean, Count of Dunois, Jeanne Dark, Maid of Orleans, Roger de Gramont, Count of Guiche, Guillaume, Count of Chaumont, Amaury de Severac, Vignoles, called La Hire...." (Communications of M. Paul Lacombe, _Bulletin de la Societe de l'Histoire de Paris_, 1894, p. 115, June 11, 1907. _Ibid._)] [Footnote 110: _Puellae Aureliensis causa adversariis orationibus disceptata auctore Jacobo Jolio_, Parisiis apud Julianum Bertant, 1609.] [Footnote 111: Jean Hordal, _Heroinae nobilissimae Ioannae Darc Lotharingae vulgo aurelianensis puellae historia_, Ponti-Mussi, 1612, in 8vo.] [Footnote 112: Rabelais, _Gargantua_, chap. vi; Abbe Thiers, _Traite des superstitions selon l'Ecriture sainte_, Paris, 1697, vol. i, p. 109.] [Footnote 113: Edmond Richer, _Histoire de la Pucelle d'Orleans en 4 livres_, MS. Biblioth. Nat. f. Fr. 10448, fol. 12mo.] [Footnote 114: "The Life of Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, is fabulous throughout from beginning to end," _Valesiana_, p. 48. "M. de Launoy, doctor of theology, had cut Saint Catherine, virgin and martyr, out of his calendar. He said that her life was a myth, and to show that he placed no faith in it, every year when the feast of the saint came round, he said a Requiem mass. This curious circumstance I learn from his own telling," _Ibid._, p. 36.] Take Chapelain, for example, whose poem was first published in 1656. Chapelain is unconsciously burlesque; he is a Scarron without knowing it. It is none the less interesting to learn from him that he merely treated his subject as an occasion for glorifying the Bastard of Orleans. He expressly says in his preface: "I did not so much regard her (the Maid) as the chief character of the poem, who, strictly speaking, is the Comte de Dunois." Chapelain was in the pay of the Duc de Longueville, a descendant of Dunois.[115] It is of Dunois that he sings; "the illustrious shepherdess" contributes the marvellous element to his poem, and, according to the good man's own expression, furnishes _les machines necessaires_ for an epic. Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret are too commonplace to be included among _ces machines_. Chapelain tells us that he took particular care so to arrange his poem that "everything which happens in it by divine favour might be believed to have taken place through human agency carried to the highest degree to which nature is capable of ascending." Herein we discern the dawn of the modern spirit.