In 1425, when Joan was in her fourteenth year, DomrÉmy had its first taste of actual war. Henry of Orly, a robber captain of the neighborhood, pounced upon the village with his band, so suddenly and swiftly that the people could not reach their island refuge. The robbers, more greedy than bloodthirsty, did not wait to slay, merely stripped the houses of everything worth carrying off, and "lifted" the cattle, as the Scots say, driving them some fifty miles to Orly's castle of Doulevant. The distressed villagers appealed to the lady of Bourlemont, who in turn called upon her kinsman Anthony of Vaudemont, a powerful noble of Lorraine. Cousin Anthony promptly sent men to recover the stolen cattle. Orly, resisting, was beaten off, and the beasts were brought back in safety to DomrÉmy, where the happy villagers received them with shouts of joy.

The English were not directly responsible for this raid. Orly was a free-lance, robbing and harrying on his own account; Vaudemont was Anglo-Burgundian at heart. None the less, people, here as everywhere, were beginning to feel that war and trouble had come with the English, and that there could be no lasting peace or quiet while they trod the soil of France.

Not long after this raid, about noon of a summer day, Joan of Arc was in her father's garden, which lay between the house and the little gray church. We do not know just what the girl was doing, whether gathering flowers for her pleasure, or herbs for household use, or simply dreaming away a leisure hour, as girls love to do. Suddenly "on her left hand, toward the church, she saw a great light, and had a vision of the archangel Michael, surrounded by other angels."[18]

Thus, briefly and simply, the marvelous story begins. Indeed, the beginning must needs be brief, since only Joan herself could tell of the vision, and she was always reticent about it. She would not, press her as they might, describe the appearance of the archangel. We must picture him for ourselves, and this, thanks to Guido Reni, we may easily do. The splendid young figure in the sky-blue corslet, his fair hair afloat about his lightning countenance as he raises his sword above the prostrate Dragon, is familiar to us all. We may, if you please, fancy him similarly attired in the little garden at DomrÉmy, but the lightning would be softened to a kindlier glow as he addressed the frightened child.

Michael, chief of the seven (some say eight) archangels, is mentioned five times in the Scriptures, always as fighting: his festival (September 29th) should be kept, one might think, with clash of swords instead of chime of bells. We read that he was the special protector of the Chosen People; that he was the messenger of peace and plenty, the leader of the heavenly host in war, the representative of the Church triumphant; that his name means "God's power," or "who is like God." As late as 1607, the red-velvet-covered buckler said to have been carried by him in his war with Lucifer was shown in a church in Normandy, till its exhibition was forbidden by the Bishop of Avranches. On the promontory of Malea is a chapel built to him; when the wind blows from that quarter, the sailors call it the beating of St. Michael's wings, and in sailing past they pray the saint to keep the great wings folded till they have rounded the cape. Of St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, it is told that whatever woman sits in the rocky seat known as Michael's Chair, will rule her husband ever after. For further light on St. Michael, see Paradise Lost. It remained for a poet of our own day, more lively than Miltonic, to fix him in our minds with a new epithet:

Little Joan, trembling among her rose-bushes, knew, we may imagine, none of these things. She saw "Messire Saint Michel" as a heavenly prince with his attending angels: "there was much light from every side," she said, "as was fitting." He spoke to her; bade her be a good girl, and go often to church. Then the vision faded.

Seven years later, answering her judges, she speaks thus of the matter: "When I was thirteen years old (or about thirteen) I had a Voice from God, to help me in my conduct. And the first time, I was in great fear."

We may well believe it. We can fancy the child, her eyes still dazzled with the heavenly light, the heavenly voice still in her ears, stealing back into the house, pale and trembling. She said no word to mother Isabel or sister Catherine of what had come to her; for many a day the matter was locked in her own faithful heart.

The vision came again. The archangel promised that St. Catherine and St. Margaret should come to give her further help and comfort, and soon after these heavenly visitants appeared. "Their heads were crowned with fair crowns," says Joan, "richly and preciously. To speak of this I have leave from the Lord.... Their voices were beautiful, gentle and sweet."

We are not told which of the six St. Catherines it was who came to Joan; whether the Alexandrian maiden martyred in 307, she of the wheel and the ring; or St. Catherine of Siena, who at Joan's birth had been dead but thirty years, who had herself seen visions and heard voices, and who by her own voice swayed kings and popes and won the hearts of all men to her; or whether it was one of the lesser lights of that starry name.

As to St. Margaret, there can be no doubt; she was the royal Atheling, queen and saint of Scotland, one of the gracious and noble figures of history. We may read to-day how, sailing across the narrow sea, bound on a visit to her mother's father, the King of Hungary (through whom she could claim kinship with St. Ursula and with St. Elizabeth of Hungary) her vessel was storm-driven up the Firth of Forth, to find shelter in the little bay still known as St. Margaret's Hope. (Close by was the Queen's Ferry, known to readers of Scott and Stevenson; to-day the monstrous Forth Bridge has buried both spots under tons of stone and iron.) Visitors were rare on that coast in the time of Malcolm III., especially ladies "of incomparable beauty." Word was hastily sent to the King hard by in his palace of Dunfermline, and he as hastily came down to see for himself; saw, loved, wooed and won, all in short space. History makes strange bedfellows; it is curious to think that Joan's saintly visitor was so early Queen of Scotland only by grace of Macbeth's dagger, which slew the gentle Duncan, her husband's father.

Joan knew St. Margaret well; there was a statue of her in the church of DomrÉmy. The gracious ladies spoke kindly to her: permitted her to embrace them; bade her, as St. Michael had bidden her, to be good, to pray, to attend church punctually.

The visions became more or less regular, appearing twice or thrice a week; Joan was obedient to them, did all they asked, partly no doubt through awe and reverence, but also because she felt from the first that a great thing had come to her. "The first time that I heard the Voice, I vowed to keep my maidenhood so long as God pleased."

If a great thing had come to her, one was demanded of her in return. The heavenly ladies, when they had told her their names, bade her "help the king of France." This was a strange thing. She, a poor peasant maiden, humble and obscure, with no knowledge save of household matters and of tending sheep and cattle; what had she to do with kings? Joan might well have asked herself this, but she did not ask the saints. She listened reverently and waited for further light upon her path. The light came very gradually; it was as if the ladies were gentling a wild bird, coming a little and still a little nearer, till they could touch, could caress it, could still the frightened panting of the tiny breast. Soon the girl came to love them dearly, so that when they left her she wept and longed to go with them. This went on for three years, Joan still keeping the matter wholly to herself. She did her work punctually and faithfully; drove the cattle, sewed, spun and wove. No one knew or guessed that anything strange had come into her life. It was seen that she grew graver, more inclined to religious exercises and to solitary musing, less and less ready to join the village frolics; but this was nothing specially remarkable in a pious French maiden of those days. It was a more serious matter that she should refuse an offer of marriage, a suitable offer from a responsible young man: her parents protested, but in vain. It was as if the suitor did not exist for her. In after years, when the folk of DomrÉmy were besieged with questions about Joan's childhood and girlhood, they racked their brains for significant memories, but found few or none. Thereupon my Lady Legend came kindly to their aid, and in an astonishingly short space of time a host of supernatural matters transpired. Some of the stories were very pretty; as that of the race in the river-meadows, the prize a nosegay, won by Joan, who ran so lightly that her feet seemed hardly to touch the ground. "Joan," cried one of the girls, "I see you flying close to the earth!" Presently, the race over, and Joan at the end of the meadow, "as it were rapt and distraught," she saw a youth beside her who said, "Joan, go home; your mother needs you!" Joan hastened home, only to be reproved by Dame Isabel for leaving her sheep.

"Did you not send for me?" asked the Maid. Assured of this, she turned meekly back, when there passed before her eyes a shining cloud, and from the cloud came a voice bidding her "change her course of life, and do marvelous deeds, for the King of Heaven had chosen her to aid the King of France. She must wear man's dress, take up arms, be a captain in the war, and all would be ordered by her advice."

Some historians accept, others reject this story: "I tell the tale that I heard told."

For several years—some say three, some five—the Maid kept these things in her heart. But now the Voices (she always called them so) became more explicit. She must "go into France."

(Here arise questions concerning the borders of Bar and Lorraine, which concern us little to-day, albeit volumes have been written about them. DomrÉmy was actually in France, but not in that part of it held by the Orleanists; Burgundy lay between, and several broad provinces held by the English: yet the people of DomrÉmy were French, every fibre of them, and not a heart in the village but was with Charles of Valois in his struggle to regain his father's crown.)

She must go to France, said the Voices, because of the "great pity" that was there. She must save France, must save the king. Over and over again, this was repeated, till the words might have been found written on her heart, as "Calais" on Mary Tudor's.

It was the autumn of 1428, and "Orleans" was the word on all lips and in all hearts of Frenchmen. The English were encamped around the city, had invested it; the siege had begun. If Orleans fell, France fell with her. Clearer and clearer came the Voices. Not only France, but Orleans, Joan was bidden to save. This done, she must seek the Dauphin Charles, must lead him to Rheims and there see him crowned king. What she must do thereafter was not clear; the Voices rang confusedly. Something there was about driving the English from France. But now, now, now, she must be about the work in hand. She must go to Robert of Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs, and ask him for an escort to the Dauphin.

"I am a poor girl!" cried the Maid. "I have never sat a horse; how should I lead an army?"

Clearer and stronger day by day the Voices reiterated their command. She must go, go, go to Vaucouleurs.

At last Joan could resist no longer. "The time went heavily with me, as with a woman in travail." She resolved to go "into France," though, she said, unless at God's bidding, she would rather be torn by wild horses than leave DomrÉmy.

About this time Jacques d'Arc had a dream, wherein he saw his daughter riding in company with armed men. He was both frightened and angry. "If I knew of your sister's going," he said to his sons, Peter and John, "I would bid you drown her; if you refused, I would drown her myself."

While Joan is standing on the threshold, looking out wide-eyed into that new, strange world of war and bloodshed for which she must leave forever the small safe ways of home, let us try to form some idea of what she was going out for to see.