declared her a relapsed heretic and caused to be burnt at the stake one who in heroic ages, when men erected altars to their liberators, would have had an altar raised to her for having served her King.

Afterwards Charles VII rehabilitated her memory, which her death itself had sufficiently honoured."] It was precisely at the end of the eighteenth century that Jeanne began to be better known and more justly appreciated, first through a little book, which the Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy derived almost wholly from the unpublished history of old Richer,[120] then by l'Averdy's erudite researches into the two trials.[121] [Footnote 120: L'Abbe Lenglet du Fresnoy, _Histoire de Jeanne d'Arc, vierge, heroine et martyre d'Etat suscitee par la Providence pour retablir la monarchie francaise, tiree des proces et pieces originales du temps_, Paris, 1753-1754, 3 vols.

in 12mo.] [Footnote 121: F.de L'Averdy, _Memorial lu au comite des manuscrits concernant la recherche a faire des minutes originales des differentes affaires qui ont eu lieu par rapport a Jeanne d'Arc, appelee communement la Pucelle d'Orleans_, Paris, Imprimerie Royale, 1787, in 4to; _Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du roi, lus au comite etabli par sa Majeste dans l'Academie royale des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres_, Paris, Imp.

Royale, 1790, vol.iii.] Nevertheless humanism, and after humanism the Reformation, and after the Reformation Cartesianism, and after Cartesianism experimental philosophy had banished the old credulity from thoughtful minds.

When the Revolution came, the bloom had already long faded from the flower of Gothic legend.