With all her determination and masculine contempt for those things that are terrors to most women, Jeanne loved her home. In after years she was ever sighing for the quiet life of her father's cottage, where she might sit and spin with her mother, or wander forth over the fields with her sister to tend the sheep. What a piteous struggle must there have been in her breast! On the one hand, an angry father, whom she loved, a mother whom she loved better, a safe home, and in it all that her simple heart desired; on the other, the great and terrible world, the armies of rough men, the dissolute courtiers, the long journeys over an unknown country, for one who had hardly stirred out of sight of Domremy church tower. Love of home, so strong in the hearts of all women, so precious to the peasant woman of France above all others, must be renounced for love of country. There have been no better or more determined patriots than women, as Cæsar found when the women of Gaul cheered their husbands on to the contest with his legions; but these women were fighting at home, as it were upon the threshold; they did not go forth to lead armies in offensive warfare; theirs was the steady courage of desperation, not the active courage which must sustain itself, keep its own fires alive, instead of relying upon the stimulus of impulse and a desperate crisis. All the fears and heartbreakings of the struggle in Jeanne's mind have been hidden from us, for she speaks not of them; having fought out this battle with herself and decided that France needs her more than does her mother, she does not allow herself to turn back, and we get but a plaintive reminiscence here and there, since she has locked up this grief in her heart. The opportunity to attempt the execution of the commands imposed by her voices was long in coming; she had become a subject of common talk in her village; everywhere she met discouraging incredulity, if not ridicule. It was not that there was lack of belief in marvels, for the land was filled with stories of portents and wonders in which the people did not hesitate to believe. There was the holy peasant whom the great captain, Xaintrailles, brought before the court to display upon his hands and feet the very marks of the cross, the stigmata, and who was said to sweat blood upon the day of the Passion. There was Catherine de la Rochelle, who saw visions of angels and who proclaimed herself commissioned to discover treasures for the dauphin. In these and the like the people of Domremy may have believed; but not in their own little peasant girl; for had they not known her when she was but like the rest, a simple shepherdess?