Jeanne d'Arc did not regard herself as a saint, nor was she free from human faults of temper and of conduct that accord but ill with sanctity. Her outbursts of wholesome wrath, some one or two of which we have noted, mark her as that which she was, no patient martyr, but a strong, healthy woman, normal in many things, and blessed with much practical sense, in spite of her visions. It was this very fact in Jeanne's life that enabled her enemies to seize upon the manifestations of her likeness to other women of her class and time and to draw Jeanne as but a common, coarse, immodest woman. In the disgusting Joan of Shakespeare's _Henry VI._ (if it be his), and in the shameless wanton of Voltaire's _Pucelle d'Orléans_ there is just this much of truth to life, that the true Jeanne was a peasant lass and, in all things not directly connected with her great deeds, spoke and acted as one of her class would have acted and spoken, with far greater freedom than would be consistent with modesty in a more cultured society. We do not mean to say that there is the least justification or excuse for these attempts to defame Jeanne d'Arc; to condemn her as a common virago because she sometimes uttered her commands with too little regard for propriety in speech would be like condemning Washington because he could and did, on occasion, swear a good round oath. But the proper defence of Jeanne d'Arc against Shakespeare and Voltaire is neither to vilify them nor to obscure the human side of her character and exalt her to something altogether faultless and divine, something altogether "too bright and good for human nature's daily food."