appears like the formal _sommation_ of French law, made as a matter of
form before the appellant takes action on his own responsibility; but
Baudricourt had probably more to do with it than appears to be at all
certain from the after evidence. One of the persons present, at all
events, young Poulengy above mentioned, bore it in mind and pondered it
in his heart.

Meantime, Jeanne returned home--the strangest home-going,--for by this
time her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumour
must have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph,
to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of any
difference between Jeanne and her companions save the greater goodness
to which everybody bears testimony. No doubt, it must have reached
Jacques d'Arc's cottage even before she came back with the kind Durand,
a changed creature, already the consecrated Maid of France, La Pucelle,
apart from all others. The French peasant is a hard man, more fierce in
his terror of the unconventional, of having his domestic affairs exposed
to the public eye, or his family disgraced by an exhibition of anything
unusual either in act or feeling, than almost any other class of beings.
And it is evident that he took his daughter's intention according to the
coarsest interpretation, as a wild desire for adventure and intention
of joining herself to the roving troopers, the soldiers always hated and
dreaded in rural life. He suddenly appears in the narrative in a fever
of apprehension, with no imaginative alarm or anxiety about his girl,
but the fiercest suspicion of her, and dread of disgrace to ensue. We do
not know what passed when she returned, further than that her father had
a dream, no doubt after the first astounding explanation of the purpose
that had so long been ripening in her mind. He dreamed that he saw her
surrounded by armed men, in the midst of the troopers, the most evident
and natural interpretation of her purpose, for who could divine that