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Personal recollections of Joan of Arc by the Sieur Louis de Conte
Personal recollections of Joan of Arc by the Sieur Louis de Conte Author:Mark Twain Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A PECULIARITY OF JOAN OF ARC'S HISTORY The details of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography which is unique among the world's biographies in one respect: I... more »t is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us from the witness-stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431, and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later, are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the comprehensiveness that attaches to hers. The Sieur Louis de Cnnte is faithful to her official history in his Personal Recollections, and thus far his trustworthiness is unimpeachable; but his mass of added particulars must depend for credit upon his own word alone. The Translator. chapter{Section 4THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE TO HIS GREAT-GREAT-GRAND NEPHEWS AND NIECES This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a youth. In all the tales and songs and histories of Joan of Arc, which you and the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in the late invented art of printing, mention is made of me, the Sieur Louis de Conte—I was her page and secretary. I was with her from the beginning until the end. I was reared in the same village with her. I played with her every day, when we were little children together, just as you play with your mates. Now that we perceive how great she was, now that her name fills the whole world, it seems strange that what I am saying is true; for it is as if a perishable paltry candle should speak of the eternal sun riding in the he...« less