Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in ParisI, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on
the 6th of January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before
Joan of Arc was born in Domremy. My family had fled to those
distant regions from the neighborhood of Paris in the first years of
the century. In politics they were Armagnacs--patriots; they were
for our own French King, crazy and impotent as he was. The
Burgundian party, who were for the English, had stripped them,
and done it well. They took everything but my father's small
nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it in
poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there
was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region
of comparative quiet; he
