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Show MANY PROPHECIES Of JOAN Of ARC VERIFIED I (cnonization of Maid of Orleans Renews I Interest in Her Adventur- j ocs Life. ! ; (Mark Twain in Harper's Magazine.) I .lu-t now as the life of .loan of Arc is being fitted in Rome, a renewed interest in lier marvol- ? 1. is life is attracting widespread attention. Amoiifr I j.i-r countrymen, the devil's advocates, who poured j j. uli their wrath on the Maid of Dormcmy, have, i t their Waterloo. On this' side of the Atlantic ; 1 :! life, as sketehed by Mark Twainthrows some I ;:npirtant light on that period of French history. I I.- rives 1 lie facts of her life which present a j h range phenomena in her history. Beginning with j j:. r early life, he says: j "She lived in a dull little village on the frontiers V , f t" civilization; she had been nowhere and had seen ' ji.. thing; she knew none but simple shepherd folk; she had never seen a person of note; she hardly ; knew what a soldier looked like; she had never ridden a horse, nor had a warlike weapon in her 'hand; she could neither reaed nor write; the could spin and sew; she knew her cateehism and her ? prayers and the fabulous histories of the saints, i juid this was all her learning. . . . ' "She went to the veteran commandant of Yan- l foulrurs and demanded an escort of soldiers, say- ing she must march to the help of the king of ) 1" ranee, -inee she was commissioned of God to win . back his lost kingdom Tor him and set the crown ' ' upon his head. The commandant said. 'What, you? a mi are only a child.' And he advised that she be -taken back to her village and have her ears boxed. IF J nt she said she must obey God, and would come :igaiu. and again, anid yet again, and finally she . -would got the soldiers. She said truly. In time be yielded, afler months of delay and refusal, and ;:ao her ihe soldiers; and took off his sword and ave her thai, and" said: 'Go and let come what - May." She made her long and perilous journey -through the enemy's country, and spoke with the ling, and convinced him. Then she was sum- i M.oietl before the University of Poitiers to prove f "lint she was commissioned of God and not af I Satan, and daily during three weeks she sat before that learned coitgress unafraid, and capably an- swerod their deep questions out of her ignorant but f :ilf head and her simple and honest heart; and I main she won ber ease, and with it the wondering j i.ihniration of all that august company." ! Whilst, yet in her teens she received the supreme ; J.oi.'ir of being appointed comlnander-iu-chief of j ihe French army, that she had never seen. She was 5 iheu only 17 years of age. During the time (thir- 7 tc-r.n lu.inths) she bad charge of the .army her ; je-hievements are summed. up as 'the briefest cpoch- 5 .Making military career known to history." As a ; -;.ptivc and a prisoner. Hark Twain pays her the Idghe-t compliments. He says: ; "Sbe was now shut up in the dungeons of the j Vtlc of R..uen and kept, in an iron cage, with her ' .ni'U and feet and neck chained to a pillar; and j' jioin that lime forth during all ihe months of her I ib'ipri-oiiiuent. iill the end. several rough English s-Mici-s stood guard over her night and day and . 3-ot ..ufside her room, but. in it. It was a dreary Mid hideous captivity, but it did not conquer her; i "tiling could break that invincible spirit. From ' ;:- to last .-he was a prisoner a year: and she spent t'l' la-t ihree months of it on trial for her life f l "-fore j, formidable array of ecclesiastical judges, i : ,! disputing the ground with them foot by fool j s n l inch by inch with brilliant generalship and c:.i;:'ih ss pluck. The spectacle of that solitary girl, : i W' tn and friendless, without advocate or adviser. ; : ". -i without ihe help and guidance of any copy of !'- il,.. .-barges brought against her or rescript of the ..'i.nlfx and voluminous daily proceedings of the f i M!- to modify the crushing strain upon her as-1 as-1 'vi-hiug memory, fighting lhat long battle serene t -nnc'iisinayed against these cdossal odds, stands : ii. in its athos and its sublimity; it has no- re- its mate, either in the annals of fact or in i . inventions of fiction." I iif wriier eulogizes her personal character as ' to l,f reverently studiel. loved, and marvelled : . hut not to be wholly understood and accounted bv e-( ii ihe most searching analysis. She is the l r of t lie ages." be writes. "And when we con-f con-f : her origin, ber early circumstances, her sex. I : -h;,' -he id all the things upon which her re- I 3. - i T-sis while she was still a young girl, we rec- ' that while our race continues she will be fl ; - ihe riddle of the ages. ... 1 We can understand how she could be born wilh j 3 '-.iry genius, with leonine courage, with incom- 1 3 l ie fortitude, with a mind which was in several I : "i -ulars a prodigy a mind which Included 1 i . -nu its sj)ecialties the lawyer's gift of detecting . " : - laid by the adversary in cunning and treach- ' arrangements of seemingly innocent words. orators gift of eloquence, the advocate's gift of 3 ''-i-ming a case in clear and compact form, the : -v's gift of sorting and weighing evidence, and :: ..;y. something recognizable as more than a mere ' --. of tbo statesman's gift of understanding a 1 'A situation and how to make profitable use ' mi. h o-,ortunities as it offers; we can compre-i compre-i j ianv she could be born with these great qual- hut we cannot comprehend how they "became ; i i inc . r.ately usable and effective wilhout the devel-X. devel-X. I ; i iir forces of a sympathetic atmosphere and the j t cining which comes of teaching, study, practice 5 ' ars of practice and the crowning ami perfect -j hcli oi"-a thousand mistakes. . . Out of '-.'itle-pastuiing casant village lost in the iv- 3 : -fii. ss -,f an unvisited wilderness and atrophied icti ag,-.s of stupefaction and. ignorance we cannot l" a Joan of Are issue equipped to the last detail her amazing career and hope to be able to ex- 3 I ;j i 1 1 the riddle L labor at it as we may. t "ll is bevond us. All the rules fail in this gin's a--. In il,c woild's history she. stands alone e (jiio.. alone." ' 1 In referring to her verified prophecies, he says: 4 "'I'he-e ha v Ik-cp. many uninspired prophets, nut y th, a ; ihe oulv one who' ever ventured the dannr f I - - ! ! I i i -- " , i "" detail of naming, along with a foretold event, the event's precise nature, the special time-limit within which it would occur, and the place and scored fulfillment. At Vaucouleurs she said she must go to the king and be made his general, and break (he English power, and crown her sovereign at 'Reims.' It all happened. It was all to happen 'next year' and it did. She foretold her first wound and its character and date a month in advance, ad-vance, and the prophecy was recoivled in a public record-book three weeks in advance. She repeated it the morning of the date named, and it was fulfilled ful-filled before night. At Tours she foretold the limit of her military career saying it would end in one year from the time of its utterance and she was right. She foretold her martyrdom using that word, and naming a time three months away and again she was right.. At a time when France seemed hopelessly and permanently in the hands of the Knglish she twice asserted in her prison, before be-fore her judges that within seven years the English would meet, with a mightier disaster than had bei the fall of Orleans; it happened within five the fall of Paris. Other prophecies of hers came true,1 both as to the event named and the time-limit prescribed." pre-scribed." After a profound and critical study of her life.,, the brilliant author unhesitatingly says that Joan, of Arc '"is easily and by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced." ''' |