The little Joan of Arc was born in the southern central part of France, in a little village called Domremy, partly in Lorraine and partly in Champagne, 484 years ago, and though she led armies in some of the most famous battles ever fought in France, and crowned a king, she never reached the age of twenty, and never learned to read or write. Her father and mother were peasants in Domremy and were poor, as peasants in France always have been--so poor that little Joan had to begin early to do her part of the work, which meant three meals a day to the family.
When she was old enough her father used to send her to watch over the sheep all day long in the fields and woods near their home, and all through these long hours, in the heat of summer or the cold of fall or spring, she had nothing to do but think and watch sheep grazing. It was a strange age in France four centuries and a half ago. People generally believed in visions, in miracles, in supernatural powers, and were easily influenced by fanaticism and enthusiasm in religious and every-day matters. A huge crowd of men, women, and children would become possessed with some idea, and would leave their daily work, their shops, their house-keeping, and their games, and rush to market-place or field to carry out this idea. In many towns the whole inhabitants would give their labor to build an enormous cathedral. Hundreds of people would catch hold of a long rope, and drag one of the big blocks of stone through a city's streets to be placed on the cathedral walls, and hundreds of unfortunate people and children were killed by different kinds of accidents while working in this fanatical way.
Then it was common, too, for some one to say that he or she was inspired by visions and voices to do or say one thing or another, and the people would rush after the inspired one to hear or to do whatever was ordered, or to try and be healed by touching the inspired person. Some were rank fakirs, who every now and then grew rich before they were discovered. Others really believed in all they said and did, and their confidence in themselves made hundreds of people follow them.
It is a mistake to think this is all gone by nowadays, for as a matter of fact it is not. Only a few years ago hundreds of people in all the stages of consumption travelled to Berlin to be treated by Dr. Koch, because he gave out, and no doubt, believed, that he had found a cure for it. At Lourdes, a city in France, there is to-day a grotto where people go for miles and miles around to be cured of all sorts of incurable diseases. And if these things attract people to-day, when nobody really believes much in such matters, you can begin to realize what fearful enthusiasm there must have been in a day when every one was only too glad to believe such things, and when most persons felt more or less strongly that they were some day going to have visions or missions of some kind.