Chapter M: BERGERET: “If I have rightly understood you, monsieur

l’abbé, you do not consider the strange event at Fierbois as an attested miracle, when Jeanne, as they say, pointed out a sword concealed in the wall. And you are not certain that the Maid, as she herself declared, brought back a child to life at Lagny. You know my opinions, and for my part I should give a natural interpretation to these two facts. I suppose that the sword was fastened to the wall of the Church as a votive offering, and was consequently visible. As for the child that the Maid raised from the dead for the time necessary for the administration of baptism, and who died again after having been brought to the font, I confine myself to reminding you that there was near Domremy a Notre-Dame-des-Aviots whose particular function it was to endow still-born children with a few hours of life. I suspect that the memory of Notre-Dame-des-Aviots had a good deal to do with the illusions that possessed Jeanne d’Arc when she believed, at Lagny, that she had raised a new-born child from the dead.”

M. LANTAIGNE: “There is much uncertainty in these explanations, monsieur. And rather than adopt them, I suspend my judgment, which inclines, I confess, towards the miraculous side, at least with respect to Saint Catherine’s sword. For the passage is precise: the sword was _in_ the wall, and it was necessary to excavate to find it. Neither is it impossible, again, that God, upon the efficacious prayers of a virgin, should have given life back to a child that had died without having received baptism.”

M. BERGERET: “You speak, monsieur l’abbé, of ‘the efficacious prayers of a virgin.’ Do you then grant, in accordance with the belief of the Middle Ages, that there was some virtue, some peculiar power, in Jeanne d’Arc’s virginity?”