mistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps some ancient
privilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for the altar, and
church vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what had been
Church lands. At all events this, and other kindred works of the needle,
seems to have been the chief occupation to which Jeanne was brought up.

The education of this humble house seems to have come entirely from the
mother. It was natural that the children should not know A from B, as
Jeanne afterward said; but no one did, probably, in the village nor even
on much higher levels than that occupied by the family of Jacques d'Arc.
But the children at their mother's knee learned the Credo, they
learned the simple universal prayers which are common to the wisest and
simplest, which no great savant or poet could improve, and no child fail
to understand: "Our Father, which art in Heaven," and that "Hail, Mary,
full of grace," which the world in that day put next. These were the
alphabet of life to the little Champagnards in their rough woollen
frocks and clattering sabots; and when the house had been set in
order,--a house not without comfort, with its big wooden presses full of
linen, and the _pot au feu_ hung over the cheerful fire,--came the
real work, perhaps embroideries for the Church, perhaps only good stout
shirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the boys,
and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women. "Asked if
she had learned any art or trade, said: Yes, that her mother had taught
her to sew and spin, and so well, that she did not think any woman in
Rouen could teach her anything." When the lady in the ballad makes her
conditions with the peasant woman who is to bring up her boy, her "gay
goss hawk," and have him trained in the use of sword and lance, she
undertakes to teach the "turtle-doo," the woman child substituted for
him, "to lay gold with her hand." No doubt Isabeau's child learned
this difficult and dainty art, and how to do the beautiful and delicate