they offered the Duke of Burgundy to place their city in his hands, that
it might not fall into those of the English; and Philip the Good accepted
the offer, but the Duke of Bedford made a formal objection: "He didn't
care," he said, "to beat the bushes for another to get the birds."
Philip in displeasure withdrew from the siege the small force of
Burgundians he had sent. The English remained alone before the place,
which was every day harder pressed and more strictly blockaded. The
besieged were far from foreseeing what succor was preparing for them.

This very year, on the 6th of January, 1428, at Domremy, a little village
in the valley of the Meuse, between Neufchateau and Vaucouleurs, on the
edge of the frontier from Champagne to Lorraine, the young daughter of
simple tillers of the soil, "of good life and repute, herself a good,
simple, gentle girl, no idler, occupied hitherto in sewing or spinning
with her mother, or driving afield her parent's sheep, and sometimes,
even, when her father's turn came round, keeping for him the whole flock
of the commune," was fulfilling her sixteenth year. It was Joan of Arc,
whom all her neighbors called Joannette. She was no recluse; she often
went with her companions to sing and eat cakes beside the fountain by the
gooseberry-bush, under an old beech, which was called the fairy-tree: but
dancing she did not like. She was constant at church, she delighted in
the sound of the bells, she went often to confession and communion, and
she blushed when her fair friends taxed her with being too religious. In
1421, when Joan was hardly nine, a band of Anglo-Burgundians penetrated
into her country, and transferred thither the ravages of war. The
village of Domremy and the little town of Vaucouleurs were French, and
faithful to the French king-ship; and Joan wept to see the lads of her
parish returning bruised and bleeding from encounters with the enemy.
Her relations and neighbors were one day obliged to take to flight, and
at their return they found their houses burned or devastated. Joan