The Valet's Tragedy, and Other StudiesLang, Andrew
History
The Valet's Tragedy, and Other Studies
Lang, Andrew
History; World history
Moreover, the next witness, the cure of Sermaise, aged fifty-three, says
that, twenty-four years ago (in 1452), a young woman dressed as a man,
calling herself Jeanne la Pucelle, used to come to Sermaise, and that,
as he heard, she was the near kinswoman of all the Voultons, ‘and he saw
her make great and joyous cheer with them while she was at Sermaise.’*
Clearly it was about this time, in or before 1452, that Perinet himself
was conversant with Jehan and Pierre du Lys, and with their sister,
calling herself La Pucelle.
*Op. cit. p. 11.
Again, Jehan le Montigueue, aged about seventy, deposed that, in 1449,
a woman calling herself Jeanne la Pucelle came to Sermaise and feasted
with the Voultons, as also did (but he does not say at the same time)
the Maid’s brother, Jehan du Lys.* Jehan du Lys could, at least, if he
did not accept her, have warned his cousins, the Voultons, against their
pretended kinswoman, the false Pucelle. But for some three years at
least she came, a welcome guest, to Sermaise, matched herself against
the cure at tennis, and told him that he might now say that he had
played against la Pucelle de France. This news gave him the greatest
pleasure.
*Op. cit. pp. 4,5, MM. de Bouteiller and de Graux do not observe the
remarkable nature of this evidence, as regards the BROTHERS of the Maid;
see their Preface, p. xxx.
Jehan Guillaume, aged seventy-six, had seen both the self-styled Pucelle
and the real Maid’s brothers at the house of the Voultons. He did not
know whether she was the true Maid or not.
It is certain, practically, that this PUCELLE, so merry at Sermaise with
the brothers and cousins of the Maid, was the Jeanne des Armoises of
1436-1439. The du Lys family could not successively adopt TWO impostors
as their sister! Again, the woman of circ. 1449-1452 is not a younger
sister of Jeanne, who in 1429 had no sister living, though one,
Catherine, whom she dearly loved, was dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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