The prodigious activity of this authoress can best be appreciated by reference to her own statement that, by the year 1405, she had "produced fifteen works of importance, without counting other special little _dittiés_, which together fill about seventy sheets of large size." The chief part of her work was already done; for the disturbed condition of the kingdom after the murder of Louis d'Orléans (1407) interrupted her labors. She had thoroughly naturalized herself in her adopted country, and this fervent patriot, who grieved that she was helpless to save France, must have suffered intensely during the dark years that followed. In 1410, she wrote a _Lamentation_ upon the horrors of civil war, and two years later, after the overthrow of the communist government of Paris, the Cabochiens, she wrote a _Livre de la Paix_, full of harsh but just criticisms upon those butchers and bakers who would reform the whole world if first allowed to destroy it. Then came the greater sorrows of Agincourt and the English conquest. Christine fled from Paris, no longer the home of those princes who had favored her, and found refuge in a convent, probably the convent at Poissy to which her daughter had already retired. It was the breaking up of her little family, her two sons going back to Italy to seek a more favorable field for their peaceful talents, and the mother remaining in seclusion for eleven years. It was probably not long before her death, of which we do not know the precise date, that the good lady heard in her cloister the glad news of the coming of the Maid of Orléans and of the consecration of the king at Rheims. All her love for her dear land of France welled up in her heart, and in gladness and wonder she sang the _Dittié de Jeanne d'Arc_, the praise of this "girl of sixteen years... before whom enemies fly, not one dare stand.... Oh! what honor to our sex! our sex, that God loves, it would seem." We cannot better conclude this account of a pure and noble woman--of one who loved her husband, her children and her country, and who, above all, preserved respect for herself and for her womanhood in an evil age--than in the words of her triumphant song of joy which proclaims that France is saved, and that it is a woman who saves France: "Chose est bien digne de mémoire Que Dieu par une vierge tendre Sur France si grand' grâce estendre. Tu Johanne, de bonne heure née, Benoist (Béni) soit (le) Ciel qui te créa, Par miracle fut (elle) envoyée Au roi pour sa provision; Son fait n'est pas illusion, Car bien a été éprouvée.... Par conseil en conclusion A l'effet la chose est prouvée, Et sa belle vie, par (ma) foi, Par quoi (laquelle) on ajoute plus (de) foi A son fait, quoi qu'elle fasse, Toujours en Dieu devant la face.... Hée! quel honneur au féminin Sexe! que Dieu l'aime, il appert!" CHAPTER XII