My Jeanne D'arc

THIS is the greatest story in the world, of the most remarkable person, though but a mere unlettered girl in her teens, that has ever lived in the tide of times. I repeat, the greatest story in the world save ONE, that is beyond all human comparison. If I have failed to do justice to it the failure cannot be ascribed to any lack of admiration for the heroine or any lack of faith in the saint. Still less may it be imputed to a careless or deficient preparation. I have journeyed far and wide in quest of materials and inspiration for this book, visiting all the places identified with her brief and glorious career. I have consulted, in the original texts, mostly French, the best work of modern scholars, histories, romances, legends dealing with Jeanne d'Arc and her epoch—a great body of literature. There is a voluminous common stock upon which all writers must draw more or less; as to which no one can honestly profess to be without obligations. But I have not suffered myself to be hampered by my precursors: having read, assimilated, digested, and moreover carried the subject in my mind for years, I have produced my own conception and set forth the. narrative in my own fashion, without perverse or unwarranted treatment of the accepted grounds. After all is said, one's chief obligation is to the Maid herself, to her imperishable words and deeds, which surpass the imagination of any writer. I confess it was with no small diffidence, though under a strong sense of compulsion, that I set myself to the task of writing a book on Jeanne d'Arc, adding needlessly perhaps to the immense literature that has gathered about this pure and inspiring figure. If my title seems to imply an undue presumption--if I may not call her my Jeanne d'Arc, at least she has possessed me during many years, and I do not now for the first time take up the pen in her cause. I assure myself, with a special regard to the American public, that it will not be a labor in vain—nay, that it may have been reserved for me to bring one more stone to the Temple of Truth.