In the course of our narrative we have taken occasion, from time to time, to present estimates of the character of Jeanne d'Arc; perhaps it may be well, now that her meteoric career has ended in the flames of the market place of Rouen, to consider once more the character of this heroine in its main features. The results of her activity in French history, though not in all cases immediately apparent, were so marvellous that our judgment may well be unduly influenced. On the one hand, in our desire to emphasize the extraordinary nature of her deeds, we may tend to depreciate the actual abilities of Jeanne; on the other, the glory of the deeds may blind us to the shortcomings of the woman. In her own day, and especially after her death, her contemporaries in France had begun to regard her as a saint, and a veritable cult of Jeanne d'Arc soon grew up, encrusting the simple facts of her story with endless and fantastic arabesques of legend. Charles VII., who had abandoned the woman in her hour of need, who had made no earnest effort to succor the leader to whom he owed his crown, entered with considerable energy and enthusiasm into the cult of the saint. It was due to his initiative that, in 1455, Pope Calixtus III. gave order that Jeanne's trial be revised. It was at best but cold and tardy gratitude on Charles's part, this rehabilitation of the memory of the girl whom he had used and then dropped when she was no longer serviceable; but we must in justice say that he in every way furthered the investigation into the facts of an episode in his life which he must have now regarded with poignant regret and shame, more poignant as the glory of the lost heroine was brought into full light. In this exhaustive inquiry into the career of Jeanne d'Arc witnesses from far and near were examined and documents rescued from oblivion, and at the end of the eight months' proceedings the new court, with a mass of testimony before it which fills volumes, reversed the partisan decision of the court of Rouen, acquitted the heroine of the false charges brought against her, and not only vindicated her honor, but pronounced favorably upon her claims to sanctity. Jeanne was already canonized in popular imagination, and though the official sanction of Rome was long in the granting, in the hearts of all France she had a veneration far more precious than any ever vouchsafed to a saint.