Jeanne, the daughter of one who is described as a _simple laboureur_ (which may mean that he was an independent farmer in a small way, not a mere laborer), was born in 1412, and was therefore old enough to see and to appreciate the worst of the miseries of France and to understand the tales of war and of English outrages brought to her father's door by many a traveller on the great highway that passed through Domremy; and her heart was filled with pity for the poor dauphin, repudiated by his own mother, exiled from his kingdom by the English, wandering aimlessly from province to province where the arms of his enemies made it safe for him to pass. The child's mind could but be stirred and filled with those vague, generous dreams of sacrifice, of heroism, of impossible achievements, which, like other visions, fade "into the light of common day" with most of us. Not so with Jeanne, in whom from the start there was something mystical, something that set her apart from other children. With her work-a-day life we are not concerned, nor with those members of her family who stand for none of the things of the spirit for which she was to serve. Her father, of whom even tradition has been able to make neither a monster nor a hero, was merely a commonplace peasant, apparently amiable and kindly, but manifestly incapable of sympathy with things ethereal and supernatural; we need not go so far as De Quincey and deny him patriotism: "He would greatly have preferred... the saving of a pound or so of bacon to saving the Oriflamme of France." And so with her brothers, Jean and Pierre; though ennobled by the king, and though doubtless very good fellows, they were certainly very far from being noble in spirit, or in any way comparable to their sister. For Jeanne's nobility was based upon no accident of birth or favor of a prince: it was the gift of God.