Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Volume 1
by Mark Twain · English · Gutenberg #2874 · 448,528 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Volume 1
Author: Mark Twain
Release date: September 15, 2004 [eBook #2874]
Most recently updated: August 13, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2874
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC — VOLUME 1 ***
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF
JOAN OF ARC
VOLUME 1 (of 2)
By Mark Twain
Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of
human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex, who
has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a nation at the
age of seventeen
LOUIS KOSSUTH.
Contents
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
A PECULIARITY OF JOAN OF ARC’S HISTORY
THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
BOOK I IN DOMREMY
Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
Chapter 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
Chapter 3 All Aflame with Love of France
Chapter 4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
Chapter 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
Chapter 6 Joan and Archangel Michael
Chapter 7 She Delivers the Divine Command
Chapter 8 Why the Scorners Relented
BOOK II IN COURT AND CAMP
Chapter 1 Joan Says Good-By
Chapter 2 The Governor Speeds Joan
Chapter 3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
Chapter 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
Chapter 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King
Chapter 7 Our Paladin in His Glory
Chapter 8 Joan Persuades Her Inquisitors
Chapter 9 She Is Made General-in-Chief
Chapter 10 The Maid’s Sword and Banner
Chapter 11 The War March Is Begun
Chapter 12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army
Chapter 13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise
Chapter 14 What the English Answered
Chapter 15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
Chapter 16 The Finding of the Dwarf
Chapter 17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth
Chapter 18 Joan’s First Battle-Field
Chapter 19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts
Chapter 20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
Chapter 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
Chapter 22 The Fate of France Decided
Chapter 23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King
Chapter 24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility
Chapter 25 At Last—Forward!
Chapter 26 The Last Doubts Scattered
Chapter 27 How Joan Took Jargeau
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
By The Sieur Louis De Conte
(her page and secretary)
In Two Volumes
Volume 1.
Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English from the
original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives of France
By Jean Francois Alden
Authorities examined in verification of the truthfulness of this
narrative:
J. E. J. QUICHERAT, Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc.
J. FABRE, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc.
H. A. WALLON, Jeanne d’Arc.
M. SEPET, Jeanne d’Arc.
J. MICHELET, Jeanne d’Arc.
BERRIAT DE SAINT-PRIX, La Famille de Jeanne d’Arc.
La Comtesse A. DE CHABANNES, La Vierge Lorraine.
Monseigneur RICARD, Jeanne d’Arc la Venerable.
Lord RONALD GOWER, F.S.A., Joan of Arc. JOHN O’HAGAN, Joan of Arc.
JANET TUCKEY, Joan of Arc the Maid.
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must
judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards
of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of
their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no
illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet
the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique.
It can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving
or apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, it is still
flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest
place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached
by any other mere mortal.
When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the
rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at
the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her
and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful
when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was
become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of
a promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great
thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves
upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine,
and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal;
she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was
steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had
forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when
men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly
true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal
dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a
dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of
her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the
highest places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when
crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest
personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era
and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black
with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.
She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a
place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can
be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her King
from his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered
rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing.
All she would take for herself—if the King would grant it—was leave
to go back to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel
her mother’s arms about her, and be her housemaid and helper. The
selfishness of this unspoiled general of victorious armies, companion of
princes, and idol of an applauding and grateful nation, reached but that
far and no farther.
The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking any
recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it
was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal.
Caesar carried conquests far, but he did it with the trained and
confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; and
Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a
trained soldier, and he began his work with patriot battalions inflamed
and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed upon
them by the Revolution—eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of
war, not old and broken men-at-arms, despairing survivors of an age-long
accumulation of monotonous defeats; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in
years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without
influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless
under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers
disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the
hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage
and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing
to fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse,
and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she
turned back the tide of the Hundred Years’ War, she fatally crippled the
English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE,
which she bears to this day.
And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine
and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most
innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and
burned her alive at the stake.
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: It 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 Conte 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 word alone.
THE TRANSLATOR.
THE 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 heavens and say, “He was gossip and housemate to me when we
were candles together.” And yet it is true, just as I say. I was her
playmate, and I fought at her side in the wars; to this day I carry in
my mind, fine and clear, the picture of that dear little figure, with
breast bent to the flying horse’s neck, charging at the head of the
armies of France, her hair streaming back, her silver mail plowing
steadily deeper and deeper into the thick of the battle, sometimes
nearly drowned from sight by tossing heads of horses, uplifted
sword-arms, wind-blow plumes, and intercepting shields. I was with her
to the end; and when that black day came whose accusing shadow will lie
always upon the memory of the mitered French slaves of England who were
her assassins, and upon France who stood idle and essayed no rescue, my
hand was the last she touched in life.
As the years and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the
marvelous child’s meteor flight across the war firmament of France
and its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and
deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and
divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for
what she was—the most noble life that was ever born into this world save
only One.
BOOK I IN DOMREMY
Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
I, 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 left behind him a region peopled with furies,
madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man’s life
safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly,
sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon
wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here,
there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped
naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the
courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and
create plagues.
And plagues they did create. Epidemics swept away the people like
flies, and the burials were conducted secretly and by night, for public
funerals were not allowed, lest the revelation of the magnitude of the
plague’s work unman the people and plunge them into despair. Then came,
finally, the bitterest winter which had visited France in five hundred
years. Famine, pestilence, slaughter, ice, snow—Paris had all these at
once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the
city in daylight and devoured them.
Ah, France had fallen low—so low! For more than three quarters of a
century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed
had her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and
accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a
French one to flight.
When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon
France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he
left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions
in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came
raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning
roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder
brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while
they begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and
mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When
the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the
burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead
and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden themselves.
I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose housekeeper became a loving
mother to me. The priest, in the course of time, taught me to read and
write, and he and I were the only persons in the village who possessed
this learning.
At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte, became
my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the village church, and
the small garden of Joan’s parents was behind the church. As to that
family there were Jacques d’Arc the father, his wife Isabel Romee; three
sons—Jacques, ten years old, Pierre, eight, and Jean, seven; Joan, four,
and her baby sister Catherine, about a year old. I had these
children for playmates from the beginning. I had some other playmates
besides—particularly four boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, Noel
Rainguesson, and Edmond Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time;
also two girls, about Joan’s age, who by and by became her favorites;
one was named Haumetter, the other was called Little Mengette. These
girls were common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew
up, both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough, you
see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing stranger,
howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his reverence to
those two humble old women who had been honored in their youth by the
friendship of Joan of Arc.
These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type;
not bright, of course—you would not expect that—but good-hearted and
companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they
grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices
got at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and
without examination also—which goes without saying. Their religion was
inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find
fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody’s faith; and when
the split came, when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once,
nobody in Domremy was worried about how to choose among them—the Pope of
Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all.
Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac—a patriot—and if we
children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate
the English and Burgundian name and polity in that way.
Chapter 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time
and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and
sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The
houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows—that is, holes in
the walls which served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there was
very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main industry;
all the young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery
plain extended in a wide sweep to the river—the Meuse; from the rear
edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was
the great oak forest—a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and
full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it
by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons
that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their
homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time.
It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and
scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a
cavalier’s hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don’t know
what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody
said who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a
brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it,
therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was
not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when
there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any
bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber
and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an
opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time,
and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon,
I always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for
that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a
little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre
Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell.
It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be
and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the
earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and
get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest
had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it
in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners,
and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it
was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the
smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell
again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other—and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism,
but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be
so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward
Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and
a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on
summer days the children went there—oh, every summer for more than five
hundred years—went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours
together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and
it was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild
flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the
fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as
keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness
between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years—tradition said a thousand—but only the warmest affection and the
most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child’s playmates did, and the sign of it was there
to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the
tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the
reason it was known that the fairies did it was this—that it was made
all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the
Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it
a mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this
world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond
the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose
soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree—if all was well with his
soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways:
once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul
was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate
winter aspect—then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If
repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time
summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the
vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still
others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear
reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts
like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the
comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through
the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one
keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he
cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it—and there is
profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a far
land, then—if they be at peace with God—they turn their longing eyes
toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that
curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree, clothed
in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping away to
the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet
the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades and
passes—but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d’Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared
twice—to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it.
Probably because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one
gets most things at second hand in this world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two
apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one
saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly
fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, “Ah, he
is in sin, and has got his warning.” And the neighbor would shudder at
the thought and whisper back, “Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree.”
Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put
aside with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative
evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer to being proof
all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day become
authority—and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared
announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was
the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases
only a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul’s
redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long
before, and with them peace—peace that might no more be disturbed—the
eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for
I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and
danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree’s song,
the song of L’Arbre Fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet
air—a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming
spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and
carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can know
or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to
exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries
foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to
us, and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the
water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:
“And when, in Exile wand’ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of
thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!”
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the
Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows
it, yes, you will grant that:
L’ARBRE FEE DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children’s tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healed, rose a leaf.
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children’s love! They’ve loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They’ve nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young—
A thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand’ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw
them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had
held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being
blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then
he warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more
immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good
friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest
would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends.
The children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an
agreement among themselves that they would always continue to hang
flower-wreaths on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they
were still loved and remembered, though lost to sight.
But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey’s mother
passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking
anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild
happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey
which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey
stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms
holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a
great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back
and spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear
quite distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches
from the ground in perfect abandon and hilarity—oh, the very maddest and
witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures
discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and
terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their
eyes and crying; and so disappeared.
The heartless woman—no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but
only thoughtless—went straight home and told the neighbors all about it,
whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting
the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to
be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody
knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing
the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying
and begging—and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most
kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and
said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they
ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened
at the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out
of her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and
persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, “Joan, wake!
Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies—come
and save them; only you can do it!”
But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we
meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever
lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must
go, and never come back any more.
It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function
under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that
any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be
content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where
it made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and
occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at
them to prevent that.
The great tree—l’Arbre Fee de Bourlemont was its beautiful name—was
never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was
always dear; is dear to me yet when I go there now, once a year in my
old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth
and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears
and break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same
afterward. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies’
protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and
coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished
serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a
torment and have remained so to this day.
When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her
illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing
she could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for
so little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up
before him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
“The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it
not so?”
“Yes, that was it, dear.”
“If a man comes prying into a person’s room at midnight when that person
is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is
showing himself to that man?”
“Well—no.” The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he
said it.
“Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?”
Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
“Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault,” and he drew her to his
side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but
her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but
buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:
“Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit
one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little
creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the law was against
the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend
to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away
from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!”
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
“Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and
unthinking are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures
back, for your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust.
There, there, don’t cry—nobody could be sorrier than your poor old
friend—don’t cry, dear.”
“But I can’t stop right away, I’ve got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an
act?”
Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him
laugh, and said:
“Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put
on sackcloth and ashes; there—are you satisfied?”
Joan’s sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old
man through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
“Yes, that will do—if it will clear you.”
Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not
remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable
one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan
watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and
was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to
him, and he said:
“Would you mind helping me, dear?”
“How, father?”
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
“Take the ashes and put them on my head for me.”
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One
can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any
other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his
side and said:
“Oh, it is dreadful. I didn’t know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes—do please get up, father.”
“But I can’t until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?”
“I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must
forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, father,
won’t you?”
“But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning
your forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can’t be lenient; it would not
become me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your
wise little head.”
The Pere would not stir, for all Joan’s pleadings. She was about to cry
again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her
own head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and
suffocations:
“There—now it is done. Oh, please get up, father.”
The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and
said:
“Oh, you incomparable child! It’s a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort
presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I
testify.”
Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face
and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and
ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his
side again, and said:
“Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the
other children; is it not so?”
That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up
and catch me in something—just that gentle, indifferent way that fools
a person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he
is traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that.
I knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan
answered:
“Yes, father.”
“Did you hang them on the tree?”
“No, father.”
“Didn’t hang them there?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I—well, I didn’t wish to.”
“Didn’t wish to?”
“No, father.”
“What did you do with them?”
“I hung them in the church.”
“Why didn’t you want to hang them in the tree?”
“Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that
it was sinful to show them honor.”
“Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?”
“Yes. I thought it must be wrong.”
“Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of
kin to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other
children, couldn’t they?”
“I suppose so—yes, I think so.”
He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and
he did. He said:
“Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of
fearful origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now
give me a rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call
it a wrong to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved
them from it. In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?”
How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have
boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all
right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal
way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind
of a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things
which merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about?
Could he never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and
the only way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where
some other person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had
gone and set a trap for himself—that was all he had accomplished.
The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the
indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an
energy and passion which astonished him, but didn’t astonish me, for I
knew he had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax.
“Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?”
“God and the King.”
“Not Satan?”
“Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High—Satan owns no
handful of its soil.”
“Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them
in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there
all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of
God’s approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again
in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out
that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God
gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their
home—theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a
right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that
children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five
long centuries, and never any hurt or harm; and the children loved them,
and now they mourn for them, and there is no healing for their grief.
And what had the children done that they should suffer this cruel
stroke? The poor fairies could have been dangerous company for the
children? Yes, but never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of
the Fiend? What of it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had;
and children have rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would
have spoken—I would have begged for the children and the fiends, and
stayed your hand and saved them all. But now—oh, now, all is lost;
everything is lost, and there is no help more!”
Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the
Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and friendship
because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very
reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing
they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them
by accident of birth and no fault of their own. “Poor little creatures!”
she said. “What can a person’s heart be made of that can pity a
Christian’s child and yet can’t pity a devil’s child, that a thousand
times more needs it!”
She had torn loose from Pere Fronte, and was crying, with her knuckles
in her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and now she burst
out of the place and was gone before we could gather our senses together
out of this storm of words and this whirlwind of passion.
The Pere had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood there
passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a person who is
dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered toward the door of
his little workroom, and as he passed through it I heard him murmur
sorrowfully:
“Ah, me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said
true—I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame.”
When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set
a trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I
seemed to feel encouraged, and wondered if mayhap I might get him into
one; but upon reflection my heart went down, for this was not my gift.
Chapter 3 All Aflame with Love of France
SPEAKING of this matter reminds me of many incidents, many things that I
could tell, but I think I will not try to do it now. It will be more
to my present humor to call back a little glimpse of the simple and
colorless good times we used to have in our village homes in those
peaceful days—especially in the winter. In the summer we children were
out on the breezy uplands with the flocks from dawn till night, and then
there was noisy frolicking and all that; but winter was the cozy time,
winter was the snug time. Often we gathered in old Jacques d’Arc’s big
dirt-floored apartment, with a great fire going, and played games, and
sang songs, and told fortunes, and listened to the old villagers tell
tales and histories and lies and one thing and another till twelve
o’clock at night.
One winter’s night we were gathered there—it was the winter that for
years afterward they called the hard winter—and that particular night
was a sharp one. It blew a gale outside, and the screaming of the wind
was a stirring sound, and I think I may say it was beautiful, for I
think it is great and fine and beautiful to hear the wind rage and storm
and blow its clarions like that, when you are inside and comfortable.
And we were. We had a roaring fire, and the pleasant spit-spit of the
snow and sleet falling in it down the chimney, and the yarning and
laughing and singing went on at a noble rate till about ten o’clock,
and then we had a supper of hot porridge and beans, and meal cakes with
butter, and appetites to match.
Little Joan sat on a box apart, and had her bowl and bread on another
one, and her pets around her helping. She had more than was usual of
them or economical, because all the outcast cats came and took up with
her, and homeless or unlovable animals of other kinds heard about it and
came, and these spread the matter to the other creatures, and they came
also; and as the birds and the other timid wild things of the woods were
not afraid of her, but always had an idea she was a friend when they
came across her, and generally struck up an acquaintance with her to get
invited to the house, she always had samples of those breeds in stock.
She was hospitable to them all, for an animal was an animal to her,
and dear by mere reason of being an animal, no matter about its sort
or social station; and as she would allow of no cages, no collars, no
fetters, but left the creatures free to come and go as they liked, that
contented them, and they came; but they didn’t go, to any extent, and
so they were a marvelous nuisance, and made Jacques d’Arc swear a good
deal; but his wife said God gave the child the instinct, and knew what
He was doing when He did it, therefore it must have its course; it would
be no sound prudence to meddle with His affairs when no invitation had
been extended. So the pets were left in peace, and here they were, as
I have said, rabbits, birds, squirrels, cats, and other reptiles, all
around the child, and full of interest in her supper, and helping what
they could. There was a very small squirrel on her shoulder, sitting
up, as those creatures do, and turning a rocky fragment of prehistoric
chestnut-cake over and over in its knotty hands, and hunting for the
less indurated places, and giving its elevated bushy tail a flirt and
its pointed ears a toss when it found one—signifying thankfulness and
surprise—and then it filed that place off with those two slender front
teeth which a squirrel carries for that purpose and not for ornament,
for ornamental they never could be, as any will admit that have noticed
them.
Everything was going fine and breezy and hilarious, but then there came
an interruption, for somebody hammered on the door. It was one of those
ragged road-stragglers—the eternal wars kept the country full of them.
He came in, all over snow, and stamped his feet, and shook, and brushed
himself, and shut the door, and took off his limp ruin of a hat, and
slapped it once or twice against his leg to knock off its fleece of
snow, and then glanced around on the company with a pleased look upon
his thin face, and a most yearning and famished one in his eye when it
fell upon the victuals, and then he gave us a humble and conciliatory
salutation, and said it was a blessed thing to have a fire like that on
such a night, and a roof overhead like this, and that rich food to eat,
and loving friends to talk with—ah, yes, this was true, and God help the
homeless, and such as must trudge the roads in this weather.
Nobody said anything. The embarrassed poor creature stood there and
appealed to one face after the other with his eyes, and found no welcome
in any, the smile on his own face flickering and fading and perishing,
meanwhile; then he dropped his gaze, the muscles of his face began to
twitch, and he put up his hand to cover this womanish sign of weakness.
“Sit down!”
This thunder-blast was from old Jacques d’Arc, and Joan was the object
of it. The stranger was startled, and took his hand away, and there
was Joan standing before him offering him her bowl of porridge. The man
said:
“God Almighty bless you, my darling!” and then the tears came, and ran
down his cheeks, but he was afraid to take the bowl.
“Do you hear me? Sit down, I say!”
There could not be a child more easy to persuade than Joan, but this was
not the way. Her father had not the art; neither could he learn it. Joan
said:
“Father, he is hungry; I can see it.”
“Let him work for food, then. We are being eaten out of house and home
by his like, and I have said I would endure it no more, and will keep
my word. He has the face of a rascal anyhow, and a villain. Sit down, I
tell you!”
“I know not if he is a rascal or no, but he is hungry, father, and shall
have my porridge—I do not need it.”
“If you don’t obey me I’ll—Rascals are not entitled to help from honest
people, and no bite nor sup shall they have in this house. Joan!”
She set her bowl down on the box and came over and stood before her
scowling father, and said:
“Father, if you will not let me, then it must be as you say; but I would
that you would think—then you would see that it is not right to punish
one part of him for what the other part has done; for it is that poor
stranger’s head that does the evil things, but it is not his head that
is hungry, it is his stomach, and it has done no harm to anybody, but is
without blame, and innocent, not having any way to do a wrong, even if
it was minded to it. Please let—”
“What an idea! It is the most idiotic speech I ever heard.”
But Aubrey, the maire, broke in, he being fond of an argument, and
having a pretty gift in that regard, as all acknowledged. Rising in his
place and leaning his knuckles upon the table and looking about him with
easy dignity, after the manner of such as be orators, he began, smooth
and persuasive:
“I will differ with you there, gossip, and will undertake to show
the company”—here he looked around upon us and nodded his head in a
confident way—“that there is a grain of sense in what the child has
said; for look you, it is of a certainty most true and demonstrable that
it is a man’s head that is master and supreme ruler over his whole body.
Is that granted? Will any deny it?” He glanced around again; everybody
indicated assent. “Very well, then; that being the case, no part of
the body is responsible for the result when it carries out an order
delivered to it by the head; ergo, the head is alone responsible for
crimes done by a man’s hands or feet or stomach—do you get the idea? am
I right thus far?” Everybody said yes, and said it with enthusiasm, and
some said, one to another, that the maire was in great form to-night and
at his very best—which pleased the maire exceedingly and made his eyes
sparkle with pleasure, for he overheard these things; so he went on in
the same fertile and brilliant way. “Now, then, we will consider what
the term responsibility means, and how it affects the case in point.
Responsibility makes a man responsible for only those things for which
he is properly responsible”—and he waved his spoon around in a
wide sweep to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of
responsibilities which render people responsible, and several exclaimed,
admiringly, “He is right!—he has put that whole tangled thing into a
nutshell—it is wonderful!” After a little pause to give the interest
opportunity to gather and grow, he went on: “Very good. Let us suppose
the case of a pair of tongs that falls upon a man’s foot, causing a
cruel hurt. Will you claim that the tongs are punishable for that? The
question is answered; I see by your faces that you would call such a
claim absurd. Now, why is it absurd? It is absurd because, there being
no reasoning faculty—that is to say, no faculty of personal command—in
a pair of tongs, personal responsibility for the acts of the tongs is
wholly absent from the tongs; and, therefore, responsibility being
absent, punishment cannot ensue. Am I right?” A hearty burst of applause
was his answer. “Now, then, we arrive at a man’s stomach. Consider how
exactly, how marvelously, indeed, its situation corresponds to that of
a pair of tongs. Listen—and take careful note, I beg you. Can a man’s
stomach plan a murder? No. Can it plan a theft? No. Can it plan an
incendiary fire? No. Now answer me—can a pair of tongs?” (There were
admiring shouts of “No!” and “The cases are just exact!” and “Don’t he
do it splendid!”) “Now, then, friends and neighbors, a stomach which
cannot plan a crime cannot be a principal in the commission of it—that
is plain, as you see. The matter is narrowed down by that much; we will
narrow it further. Can a stomach, of its own motion, assist at a crime?
The answer is no, because command is absent, the reasoning faculty is
absent, volition is absent—as in the case of the tongs. We perceive
now, do we not, that the stomach is totally irresponsible for crimes
committed, either in whole or in part, by it?” He got a rousing cheer
for response. “Then what do we arrive at as our verdict? Clearly this:
that there is no such thing in this world as a guilty stomach; that
in the body of the veriest rascal resides a pure and innocent stomach;
that, whatever it’s owner may do, it at least should be sacred in our
eyes; and that while God gives us minds to think just and charitable and
honorable thoughts, it should be, and is, our privilege, as well as
our duty, not only to feed the hungry stomach that resides in a
rascal, having pity for its sorrow and its need, but to do it gladly,
gratefully, in recognition of its sturdy and loyal maintenance of
its purity and innocence in the midst of temptation and in company so
repugnant to its better feelings. I am done.”
Well, you never saw such an effect! They rose—the whole house rose—an
clapped, and cheered, and praised him to the skies; and one after
another, still clapping and shouting, they crowded forward, some with
moisture in their eyes, and wrung his hands, and said such glorious
things to him that he was clear overcome with pride and happiness,
and couldn’t say a word, for his voice would have broken, sure. It was
splendid to see; and everybody said he had never come up to that speech
in his life before, and never could do it again. Eloquence is a power,
there is no question of that. Even old Jacques d’Arc was carried away,
for once in his life, and shouted out:
“It’s all right, Joan—give him the porridge!”
She was embarrassed, and did not seem to know what to say, and so didn’t
say anything. It was because she had given the man the porridge long ago
and he had already eaten it all up. When she was asked why she had not
waited until a decision was arrived at, she said the man’s stomach was
very hungry, and it would not have been wise to wait, since she could
not tell what the decision would be. Now that was a good and thoughtful
idea for a child.
The man was not a rascal at all. He was a very good fellow, only he was
out of luck, and surely that was no crime at that time in France. Now
that his stomach was proved to be innocent, it was allowed to make
itself at home; and as soon as it was well filled and needed nothing
more, the man unwound his tongue and turned it loose, and it was really
a noble one to go. He had been in the wars for years, and the things he
told and the way he told them fired everybody’s patriotism away up high,
and set all hearts to thumping and all pulses to leaping; then, before
anybody rightly knew how the change was made, he was leading us a
sublime march through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw
the titanic forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the
past and face their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts
sweeping down to shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb
and flow, and waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each
detail pass before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most
adored and glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and
yonder, across that vast field of the dead and dying, we saw this and
that and the other paladin dealing his prodigious blows with weary arm
and failing strength, and one by one we saw them fall, till only one
remained—he that was without peer, he whose name gives name to the Song
of Songs, the song which no Frenchman can hear and keep his feelings
down and his pride of country cool; then, grandest and pitifulest scene
of all, we saw his own pathetic death; and our stillness, as we sat with
parted lips and breathless, hanging upon this man’s words, gave us a
sense of the awful stillness that reigned in that field of slaughter
when that last surviving soul had passed.
And now, in this solemn hush, the stranger gave Joan a pat or two on the
head and said:
“Little maid—whom God keep!—you have brought me from death to life this
night; now listen: here is your reward,” and at that supreme time for
such a heart-melting, soul-rousing surprise, without another word he
lifted up the most noble and pathetic voice that was ever heard, and
began to pour out the great Song of Roland!
Think of that, with a French audience all stirred up and ready. Oh,
where was your spoken eloquence now! what was it to this! How fine he
looked, how stately, how inspired, as he stood there with that mighty
chant welling from his lips and his heart, his whole body transfigured,
and his rags along with it.
Everybody rose and stood while he sang, and their faces glowed and their
eyes burned; and the tears came and flowed down their cheeks and their
forms began to sway unconsciously to the swing of the song, and their
bosoms to heave and pant; and moanings broke out, and deep ejaculations;
and when the last verse was reached, and Roland lay dying, all alone,
with his face to the field and to his slain, lying there in heaps and
winrows, and took off and held up his gauntlet to God with his failing
hand, and breathed his beautiful prayer with his paling pips, all burst
out in sobs and wailings. But when the final great note died out and the
song was done, they all flung themselves in a body at the singer, stark
mad with love of him and love of France and pride in her great deeds and
old renown, and smothered him with their embracings; but Joan was there
first, hugged close to his breast, and covering his face with idolatrous
kisses.
The storm raged on outside, but that was no matter; this was the
stranger’s home now, for as long as he might please.
Chapter 4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
ALL CHILDREN have nicknames, and we had ours. We got one apiece early,
and they stuck to us; but Joan was richer in this matter, for, as time
went on, she earned a second, and then a third, and so on, and we gave
them to her. First and last she had as many as half a dozen. Several
of these she never lost. Peasant-girls are bashful naturally; but she
surpassed the rule so far, and colored so easily, and was so easily
embarrassed in the presence of strangers, that we nicknamed her the
Bashful. We were all patriots, but she was called the Patriot, because
our warmest feeling for our country was cold beside hers. Also she
was called the Beautiful; and this was not merely because of the
extraordinary beauty of her face and form, but because of the loveliness
of her character. These names she kept, and one other—the Brave.
We grew along up, in that plodding and peaceful region, and got to be
good-sized boys and girls—big enough, in fact, to begin to know as much
about the wars raging perpetually to the west and north of us as our
elders, and also to feel as stirred up over the occasional news from
these red fields as they did. I remember certain of these days very
clearly. One Tuesday a crowd of us were romping and singing around the
Fairy Tree, and hanging garlands on it in memory of our lost little
fairy friends, when Little Mengette cried out:
“Look! What is that?”
When one exclaims like that in a way that shows astonishment and
apprehension, he gets attention. All the panting breasts and flushed
faces flocked together, and all the eager eyes were turned in one
direction—down the slope, toward the village.
“It’s a black flag.”
“A black flag! No—is it?”
“You can see for yourself that it is nothing else.”
“It is a black flag, sure! Now, has any ever seen the like of that
before?”
“What can it mean?”
“Mean? It means something dreadful—what else?”
“That is nothing to the point; anybody knows that without the telling.
But what?—that is the question.”
“It is a chance that he that bears it can answer as well as any that are
here, if you contain yourself till he comes.”
“He runs well. Who is it?”
Some named one, some another; but presently all saw that it was Etienne
Roze, called the Sunflower, because he had yellow hair and a round
pock-marked face. His ancestors had been Germans some centuries ago.
He came straining up the slope, now and then projecting his flag-stick
aloft and giving his black symbol of woe a wave in the air, whilst all
eyes watched him, all tongues discussed him, and every heart beat faster
and faster with impatience to know his news. At last he sprang among us,
and struck his flag-stick into the ground, saying:
“There! Stand there and represent France while I get my breath. She
needs no other flag now.”
All the giddy chatter stopped. It was as if one had announced a death.
In that chilly hush there was no sound audible but the panting of the
breath-blown boy. When he was presently able to speak, he said:
“Black news is come. A treaty has been made at Troyes between France
and the English and Burgundians. By it France is betrayed and delivered
over, tied hand and foot, to the enemy. It is the work of the Duke of
Burgundy and that she-devil, the Queen of France. It marries Henry of
England to Catharine of France—”
“Is not this a lie? Marries the daughter of France to the Butcher of
Agincourt? It is not to be believed. You have not heard aright.”
“If you cannot believe that, Jacques d’Arc, then you have a difficult
task indeed before you, for worse is to come. Any child that is born of
that marriage—if even a girl—is to inherit the thrones of both England
and France, and this double ownership is to remain with its posterity
forever!”
“Now that is certainly a lie, for it runs counter to our Salic law, and
so is not legal and cannot have effect,” said Edmond Aubrey, called the
Paladin, because of the armies he was always going to eat up some day.
He would have said more, but he was drowned out by the clamors of the
others, who all burst into a fury over this feature of the treaty, all
talking at once and nobody hearing anybody, until presently Haumette
persuaded them to be still, saying:
“It is not fair to break him up so in his tale; pray let him go on.
You find fault with his history because it seems to be lies. That were
reason for satisfaction—that kind of lies—not discontent. Tell the rest,
Etienne.”
“There is but this to tell: Our King, Charles VI., is to reign until he
dies, then Henry V. of England is to be Regent of France until a child
of his shall be old enough to—”
“That man is to reign over us—the Butcher? It is lies! all lies!” cried
the Paladin. “Besides, look you—what becomes of our Dauphin? What says
the treaty about him?”
“Nothing. It takes away his throne and makes him an outcast.”
Then everybody shouted at once and said the news was a lie; and all
began to get cheerful again, saying, “Our King would have to sign the
treaty to make it good; and that he would not do, seeing how it serves
his own son.”
But the Sunflower said: “I will ask you this: Would the Queen sign a
treaty disinheriting her son?”
“That viper? Certainly. Nobody is talking of her. Nobody expects better
of her. There is no villainy she will stick at, if it feed her spite;
and she hates her son. Her signing it is of no consequence. The King
must sign.”
“I will ask you another thing. What is the King’s condition? Mad, isn’t
he?”
“Yes, and his people love him all the more for it. It brings him near to
them by his sufferings; and pitying him makes them love him.”
“You say right, Jacques d’Arc. Well, what would you of one that is mad?
Does he know what he does? No. Does he do what others make him do? Yes.
Now, then, I tell you he has signed the treaty.”
“Who made him do it?”
“You know, without my telling. The Queen.”
Then there was another uproar—everybody talking at once, and all heaping
execrations upon the Queen’s head. Finally Jacques d’Arc said:
“But many reports come that are not true. Nothing so shameful as this
has ever come before, nothing that cuts so deep, nothing that has
dragged France so low; therefore there is hope that this tale is but
another idle rumor. Where did you get it?”
The color went out of his sister Joan’s face. She dreaded the answer;
and her instinct was right.
“The cure of Maxey brought it.”
There was a general gasp. We knew him, you see, for a trusty man.
“Did he believe it?”
The hearts almost stopped beating. Then came the answer:
“He did. And that is not all. He said he knew it to be true.”
Some of the girls began to sob; the boys were struck silent. The
distress in Joan’s face was like that which one sees in the face of a
dumb animal that has received a mortal hurt. The animal bears it, making
no complaint; she bore it also, saying no word. Her brother Jacques put
his hand on her head and caressed her hair to indicate his sympathy, and
she gathered the hand to her lips and kissed it for thanks, not saying
anything. Presently the reaction came, and the boys began to talk. Noel
Rainguesson said:
“Oh, are we never going to be men! We do grow along so slowly, and
France never needed soldiers as she needs them now, to wipe out this
black insult.”
“I hate youth!” said Pierre Morel, called the Dragon-fly because his
eyes stuck out so. “You’ve always got to wait, and wait, and wait—and
here are the great wars wasting away for a hundred years, and you never
get a chance. If I could only be a soldier now!”
“As for me, I’m not going to wait much longer,” said the Paladin; “and
when I do start you’ll hear from me, I promise you that. There are some
who, in storming a castle, prefer to be in the rear; but as for me, give
me the front or none; I will have none in front of me but the officers.”
Even the girls got the war spirit, and Marie Dupont said:
“I would I were a man; I would start this minute!” and looked very proud
of herself, and glanced about for applause.
“So would I,” said Cecile Letellier, sniffing the air like a war-horse
that smells the battle; “I warrant you I would not turn back from the
field though all England were in front of me.”
“Pooh!” said the Paladin; “girls can brag, but that’s all they are good
for. Let a thousand of them come face to face with a handful of soldiers
once, if you want to see what running is like. Here’s little Joan—next
she’ll be threatening to go for a soldier!”
The idea was so funny, and got such a good laugh, that the Paladin gave
it another trial, and said: “Why you can just see her!—see her plunge
into battle like any old veteran. Yes, indeed; and not a poor shabby
common soldier like us, but an officer—an officer, mind you, with
armor on, and the bars of a steel helmet to blush behind and hide her
embarrassment when she finds an army in front of her that she hasn’t
been introduced to. An officer? Why, she’ll be a captain! A captain,
I tell you, with a hundred men at her back—or maybe girls. Oh, no
common-soldier business for her! And, dear me, when she starts for that
other army, you’ll think there’s a hurricane blowing it away!”
Well, he kept it up like that till he made their sides ache with
laughing; which was quite natural, for certainly it was a very funny
idea—at that time—I mean, the idea of that gentle little creature, that
wouldn’t hurt a fly, and couldn’t bear the sight of blood, and was so
girlish and shrinking in all ways, rushing into battle with a gang of
soldiers at her back. Poor thing, she sat there confused and ashamed to
be so laughed at; and yet at that very minute there was something about
to happen which would change the aspect of things, and make those young
people see that when it comes to laughing, the person that laughs last
has the best chance. For just then a face which we all knew and all
feared projected itself from behind the Fairy Tree, and the thought that
shot through us all was, crazy Benoist has gotten loose from his cage,
and we are as good as dead! This ragged and hairy and horrible creature
glided out from behind the tree, and raised an ax as he came. We all
broke and fled, this way and that, the girls screaming and crying. No,
not all; all but Joan. She stood up and faced the man, and remained so.
As we reached the wood that borders the grassy clearing and jumped
into its shelter, two or three of us glanced back to see if Benoist was
gaining on us, and that is what we saw—Joan standing, and the maniac
gliding stealthily toward her with his ax lifted. The sight was
sickening. We stood where we were, trembling and not able to move. I did
not want to see the murder done, and yet I could not take my eyes away.
Now I saw Joan step forward to meet the man, though I believed my eyes
must be deceiving me. Then I saw him stop. He threatened her with his
ax, as if to warn her not to come further, but she paid no heed, but
went steadily on, until she was right in front of him—right under his
ax. Then she stopped, and seemed to begin to talk with him. It made me
sick, yes, giddy, and everything swam around me, and I could not see
anything for a time—whether long or brief I do not know. When this
passed and I looked again, Joan was walking by the man’s side toward the
village, holding him by his hand. The ax was in her other hand.
One by one the boys and girls crept out, and we stood there gazing,
open-mouthed, till those two entered the village and were hid from
sight. It was then that we named her the Brave.
We left the black flag there to continue its mournful office, for we had
other matter to think of now. We started for the village on a run,
to give warning, and get Joan out of her peril; though for one, after
seeing what I had seen, it seemed to me that while Joan had the ax the
man’s chance was not the best of the two. When we arrived the danger
was past, the madman was in custody. All the people were flocking to the
little square in front of the church to talk and exclaim and wonder over
the event, and it even made the town forget the black news of the treaty
for two or three hours.
All the women kept hugging and kissing Joan, and praising her, and
crying, and the men patted her on the head and said they wished she
was a man, they would send her to the wars and never doubt but that she
would strike some blows that would be heard of. She had to tear herself
away and go and hide, this glory was so trying to her diffidence.
Of course the people began to ask us for the particulars. I was so
ashamed that I made an excuse to the first comer, and got privately away
and went back to the Fairy Tree, to get relief from the embarrassment of
those questionings. There I found Joan, but she was there to get relief
from the embarrassment of glory. One by one the others shirked the
inquirers and joined us in our refuge. Then we gathered around Joan, and
asked her how she had dared to do that thing. She was very modest about
it, and said:
“You make a great thing of it, but you mistake; it was not a great
matter. It was not as if I had been a stranger to the man. I know him,
and have known him long; and he knows me, and likes me. I have fed him
through the bars of his cage many times; and last December, when
they chopped off two of his fingers to remind him to stop seizing and
wounding people passing by, I dressed his hand every day till it was
well again.”
“That is all well enough,” said Little Mengette, “but he is a madman,
dear, and so his likings and his gratitude and friendliness go for
nothing when his rage is up. You did a perilous thing.”
“Of course you did,” said the Sunflower. “Didn’t he threaten to kill you
with the ax?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t he threaten you more than once?”
“Yes.”
“Didn’t you feel afraid?”
“No—at least not much—very little.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She thought a moment, then said, quite simply:
“I don’t know.”
It made everybody laugh. Then the Sunflower said it was like a lamb
trying to think out how it had come to eat a wolf, but had to give it
up.
Cecile Letellier asked, “Why didn’t you run when we did?”
“Because it was necessary to get him to his cage; else he would kill
some one. Then he would come to the like harm himself.”
It is noticeable that this remark, which implies that Joan was entirely
forgetful of herself and her own danger, and had thought and wrought
for the preservation of other people alone, was not challenged, or
criticized, or commented upon by anybody there, but was taken by all
as matter of course and true. It shows how clearly her character was
defined, and how well it was known and established.
There was silence for a time, and perhaps we were all thinking of the
same thing—namely, what a poor figure we had cut in that adventure as
contrasted with Joan’s performance. I tried to think up some good way of
explaining why I had run away and left a little girl at the mercy of
a maniac armed with an ax, but all of the explanations that offered
themselves to me seemed so cheap and shabby that I gave the matter up
and remained still. But others were less wise. Noel Rainguesson fidgeted
awhile, then broke out with a remark which showed what his mind had been
running on:
“The fact is, I was taken by surprise. That is the reason. If I had had
a moment to think, I would no more have thought of running that I would
think of running from a baby. For, after all, what is Theophile Benoist,
that I should seem to be afraid of him? Pooh! the idea of being afraid
of that poor thing! I only wish he would come along now—I’d show you!”
“So do I!” cried Pierre Morel. “If I wouldn’t make him climb this
tree quicker than—well, you’d see what I would do! Taking a person by
surprise, that way—why, I never meant to run; not in earnest, I mean. I
never thought of running in earnest; I only wanted to have some fun, and
when I saw Joan standing there, and him threatening her, it was all I
could do to restrain myself from going there and just tearing the livers
and lights out of him. I wanted to do it bad enough, and if it was to do
over again, I would! If ever he comes fooling around me again, I’ll—”
“Oh, hush!” said the Paladin, breaking in with an air of disdain; “the
way you people talk, a person would think there’s something heroic
about standing up and facing down that poor remnant of a man. Why, it’s
nothing! There’s small glory to be got in facing him down, I should say.
Why, I wouldn’t want any better fun than to face down a hundred like
him. If he was to come along here now, I would walk up to him just as I
am now—I wouldn’t care if he had a thousand axes—and say—”
And so he went on and on, telling the brave things he would say and the
wonders he would do; and the others put in a word from time to time,
describing over again the gory marvels they would do if ever that madman
ventured to cross their path again, for next time they would be ready
for him, and would soon teach him that if he thought he could surprise
them twice because he had surprised them once, he would find himself
very seriously mistaken, that’s all.
And so, in the end, they all got back their self-respect; yes, and even
added somewhat to it; indeed when the sitting broke up they had a finer
opinion of themselves than they had ever had before.
Chapter 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
THEY WERE peaceful and pleasant, those young and smoothly flowing days
of ours; that is, that was the case as a rule, we being remote from the
seat of war; but at intervals roving bands approached near enough for
us to see the flush in the sky at night which marked where they were
burning some farmstead or village, and we all knew, or at least felt,
that some day they would come yet nearer, and we should have our turn.
This dull dread lay upon our spirits like a physical weight. It was
greatly augmented a couple of years after the Treaty of Troyes.
It was truly a dismal year for France. One day we had been over to have
one of our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys
of the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our
side of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell
ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square
we found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by
smoking and flaring torches.
On the steps of the church stood a stranger, a Burgundian priest, who
was telling the people news which made them weep, and rave, and rage,
and curse, by turns. He said our old mad King was dead, and that now we
and France and the crown were the property of an English baby lying in
his cradle in London. And he urged us to give that child our allegiance,
and be its faithful servants and well-wishers; and said we should now
have a strong and stable government at last, and that in a little time
the English armies would start on their last march, and it would be a
brief one, for all that it would need to do would be to conquer what
odds and ends of our country yet remained under that rare and almost
forgotten rag, the banner of France.
The people stormed and raged at him, and you could see dozens of them
stretch their fists above the sea of torch-lighted faces and shake them
at him; and it was all a wild picture, and stirring to look at; and
the priest was a first-rate part of it, too, for he stood there in the
strong glare and looked down on those angry people in the blandest and
most indifferent way, so that while you wanted to burn him at the stake,
you still admired the aggravating coolness of him. And his winding-up
was the coolest thing of all. For he told them how, at the funeral of
our old King, the French King-at-Arms had broken his staff of office
over the coffin of “Charles VI. and his dynasty,” at the same time
saying, in a loud voice, “God grant long life to Henry, King of France
and England, our sovereign lord!” and then he asked them to join him
in a hearty Amen to that! The people were white with wrath, and it tied
their tongues for the moment, and they could not speak. But Joan was
standing close by, and she looked up in his face, and said in her sober,
earnest way:
“I would I might see thy head struck from thy body!”—then, after a
pause, and crossing herself—“if it were the will of God.”
This is worth remembering, and I will tell you why: it is the only harsh
speech Joan ever uttered in her life. When I shall have revealed to you
the storms she went through, and the wrongs and persecutions, then you
will see that it was wonderful that she said but one bitter thing while
she lived.
From the day that that dreary news came we had one scare after another,
the marauders coming almost to our doors every now and then; so that we
lived in ever-increasing apprehension, and yet were somehow mercifully
spared from actual attack. But at last our turn did really come. This
was in the spring of ’28. The Burgundians swarmed in with a great noise,
in the middle of a dark night, and we had to jump up and fly for our
lives. We took the road to Neufchateau, and rushed along in the wildest
disorder, everybody trying to get ahead, and thus the movements of all
were impeded; but Joan had a cool head—the only cool head there—and
she took command and brought order out of that chaos. She did her work
quickly and with decision and despatch, and soon turned the panic flight
into a quite steady-going march. You will grant that for so young a
person, and a girl at that, this was a good piece of work.
She was sixteen now, shapely and graceful, and of a beauty so
extraordinary that I might allow myself any extravagance of language in
describing it and yet have no fear of going beyond the truth. There was
in her face a sweetness and serenity and purity that justly reflected
her spiritual nature. She was deeply religious, and this is a thing
which sometimes gives a melancholy cast to a person’s countenance, but
it was not so in her case. Her religion made her inwardly content and
joyous; and if she was troubled at times, and showed the pain of it in
her face and bearing, it came of distress for her country; no part of it
was chargeable to her religion.
A considerable part of our village was destroyed, and when it became
safe for us to venture back there we realized what other people had
been suffering in all the various quarters of France for many years—yes,
decades of years. For the first time we saw wrecked and smoke-blackened
homes, and in the lanes and alleys carcasses of dumb creatures that had
been slaughtered in pure wantonness—among them calves and lambs that had
been pets of the children; and it was pity to see the children lament
over them.
And then, the taxes, the taxes! Everybody thought of that. That burden
would fall heavy now in the commune’s crippled condition, and all faces
grew long with the thought of it. Joan said:
“Paying taxes with naught to pay them with is what the rest of France
has been doing these many years, but we never knew the bitterness of
that before. We shall know it now.”
And so she went on talking about it and growing more and more troubled
about it, until one could see that it was filling all her mind.
At last we came upon a dreadful object. It was the madman—hacked and
stabbed to death in his iron cage in the corner of the square. It was a
bloody and dreadful sight. Hardly any of us young people had ever seen
a man before who had lost his life by violence; so this cadaver had an
awful fascination for us; we could not take our eyes from it. I mean, it
had that sort of fascination for all of us but one. That one was Joan.
She turned away in horror, and could not be persuaded to go near it
again. There—it is a striking reminder that we are but creatures of use
and custom; yes, and it is a reminder, too, of how harshly and unfairly
fate deals with us sometimes. For it was so ordered that the very ones
among us who were most fascinated with mutilated and bloody death were
to live their lives in peace, while that other, who had a native and
deep horror of it, must presently go forth and have it as a familiar
spectacle every day on the field of battle.
You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since
the raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that
had really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants
may have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous
occurrences that had filtered from the world’s history dimly into their
minds, the truth is that they hadn’t. One biting little fact, visible
to their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became
at once more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the
world’s history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It
amuses me now when I recall how our elders talked then. They fumed and
fretted in a fine fashion.
“Ah, yes,” said old Jacques d’Arc, “things are come to a pretty pass,
indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from
idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business.” He meant our
young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII.
“You say well,” said the maire. “He should be informed, and that at
once. It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are
not safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made
known, indeed it shall—all France shall hear of it!”
To hear them talk, one would have imagined that all the previous ten
thousand sackings and burnings in France had been but fables, and this
one the only fact. It is always the way; words will answer as long as it
is only a person’s neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets
into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something.
The big event filled us young people with talk, too. We let it flow in
a steady stream while we tended the flocks. We were beginning to feel
pretty important now, for I was eighteen and the other youths were from
one to four years older—young men, in fact. One day the Paladin was
arrogantly criticizing the patriot generals of France and said:
“Look at Dunois, Bastard of Orleans—call him a general! Just put me in
his place once—never mind what I would do, it is not for me to say,
I have no stomach for talk, my way is to act and let others do the
talking—but just put me in his place once, that’s all! And look at
Saintrailles—pooh! and that blustering La Hire, now what a general that
is!”
It shocked everybody to hear these great names so flippantly handled,
for to us these renowned soldiers were almost gods. In their far-off
splendor they rose upon our imaginations dim and huge, shadowy and
awful, and it was a fearful thing to hear them spoken of as if they were
mere men, and their acts open to comment and criticism. The color rose
in Joan’s face, and she said:
“I know not how any can be so hardy as to use such words regarding these
sublime men, who are the very pillars of the French state, supporting it
with their strength and preserving it at daily cost of their blood. As
for me, I could count myself honored past all deserving if I might be
allowed but the privilege of looking upon them once—at a distance, I
mean, for it would not become one of my degree to approach them too
near.”
The Paladin was disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around
him that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled
his complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan’s brother
Jean said:
“If you don’t like what our generals do, why don’t you go to the great
wars yourself and better their work? You are always talking about going
to the wars, but you don’t go.”
“Look you,” said the Paladin, “it is easy to say that. Now I will tell
you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my
reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because
I am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private
soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to
rise from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one
moment. I can save France—ah, you may laugh, but I know what is in me, I
know what is hid under this peasant cap. I can save France, and I stand
ready to do it, but not under these present conditions. If they want me,
let them send for me; otherwise, let them take the consequences; I shall
not budge but as an officer.”
“Alas, poor France—France is lost!” said Pierre d’Arc.
“Since you sniff so at others, why don’t you go to the wars yourself,
Pierre d’Arc?”
“Oh, I haven’t been sent for, either. I am no more a gentleman than you.
Yet I will go; I promise to go. I promise to go as a private under your
orders—when you are sent for.”
They all laughed, and the Dragon-fly said:
“So soon? Then you need to begin to get ready; you might be called for
in five years—who knows? Yes, in my opinion you’ll march for the wars in
five years.”
“He will go sooner,” said Joan. She said it in a low voice and musingly,
but several heard it.
“How do you know that, Joan?” said the Dragon-fly, with a surprised
look. But Jean d’Arc broke in and said:
“I want to go myself, but as I am rather young yet, I also will wait,
and march when the Paladin is sent for.”
“No,” said Joan, “he will go with Pierre.”
She said it as one who talks to himself aloud without knowing it, and
none heard it but me. I glanced at her and saw that her knitting-needles
were idle in her hands, and that her face had a dreamy and absent look
in it. There were fleeting movements of her lips as if she might be
occasionally saying parts of sentences to herself. But there was no
sound, for I was the nearest person to her and I heard nothing. But I
set my ears open, for those two speeches had affected me uncannily, I
being superstitious and easily troubled by any little thing of a strange
and unusual sort.
Noel Rainguesson said:
“There is one way to let France have a chance for her salvation. We’ve
got one gentleman in the commune, at any rate. Why can’t the Scholar
change name and condition with the Paladin? Then he can be an officer.
France will send for him then, and he will sweep these English and
Burgundian armies into the sea like flies.”
I was the Scholar. That was my nickname, because I could read and write.
There was a chorus of approval, and the Sunflower said:
“That is the very thing—it settles every difficulty. The Sieur de Conte
will easily agree to that. Yes, he will march at the back of Captain
Paladin and die early, covered with common-soldier glory.”
“He will march with Jean and Pierre, and live till these wars are
forgotten,” Joan muttered; “and at the eleventh hour Noel and the
Paladin will join these, but not of their own desire.” The voice was so
low that I was not perfectly sure that these were the words, but they
seemed to be. It makes one feel creepy to hear such things.
“Come, now,” Noel continued, “it’s all arranged; there’s nothing to do
but organize under the Paladin’s banner and go forth and rescue France.
You’ll all join?”
All said yes, except Jacques d’Arc, who said:
“I’ll ask you to excuse me. It is pleasant to talk war, and I am with
you there, and I’ve always thought I should go soldiering about this
time, but the look of our wrecked village and that carved-up and bloody
madman have taught me that I am not made for such work and such sights.
I could never be at home in that trade. Face swords and the big guns and
death? It isn’t in me. No, no; count me out. And besides, I’m the eldest
son, and deputy prop and protector of the family. Since you are going to
carry Jean and Pierre to the wars, somebody must be left behind to take
care of our Joan and her sister. I shall stay at home, and grow old in
peace and tranquillity.”
“He will stay at home, but not grow old,” murmured Joan.
The talk rattled on in the gay and careless fashion privileged to youth,
and we got the Paladin to map out his campaigns and fight his battles
and win his victories and extinguish the English and put our King upon
his throne and set his crown upon his head. Then we asked him what he
was going to answer when the King should require him to name his
reward. The Paladin had it all arranged in his head, and brought it out
promptly:
“He shall give me a dukedom, name me premier peer, and make me
Hereditary Lord High Constable of France.”
“And marry you to a princess—you’re not going to leave that out, are
you?”
The Paladin colored a trifle, and said, brusquely:
“He may keep his princesses—I can marry more to my taste.”
Meaning Joan, though nobody suspected it at that time. If any had, the
Paladin would have been finely ridiculed for his vanity. There was no
fit mate in that village for Joan of Arc. Every one would have said
that.
In turn, each person present was required to say what reward he would
demand of the King if he could change places with the Paladin and do the
wonders the Paladin was going to do. The answers were given in fun, and
each of us tried to outdo his predecessors in the extravagance of the
reward he would claim; but when it came to Joan’s turn, and they rallied
her out of her dreams and asked her to testify, they had to explain to
her what the question was, for her thought had been absent, and she had
heard none of this latter part of our talk. She supposed they wanted a
serious answer, and she gave it. She sat considering some moments, then
she said:
“If the Dauphin, out of his grace and nobleness, should say to me, ‘Now
that I am rich and am come to my own again, choose and have,’ I should
kneel and ask him to give command that our village should nevermore be
taxed.”
It was so simple and out of her heart that it touched us and we did not
laugh, but fell to thinking. We did not laugh; but there came a day when
we remembered that speech with a mournful pride, and were glad that
we had not laughed, perceiving then how honest her words had been, and
seeing how faithfully she made them good when the time came, asking
just that boon of the King and refusing to take even any least thing for
herself.
Chapter 6 Joan and Archangel Michael
ALL THROUGH her childhood and up to the middle of her fourteenth year,
Joan had been the most light-hearted creature and the merriest in the
village, with a hop-skip-and-jump gait and a happy and catching laugh;
and this disposition, supplemented by her warm and sympathetic nature
and frank and winning ways, had made her everybody’s pet. She had been
a hot patriot all this time, and sometimes the war news had sobered
her spirits and wrung her heart and made her acquainted with tears, but
always when these interruptions had run their course her spirits rose
and she was her old self again.
But now for a whole year and a half she had been mainly grave; not
melancholy, but given to thought, abstraction, dreams. She was carrying
France upon her heart, and she found the burden not light. I knew that
this was her trouble, but others attributed her abstraction to religious
ecstasy, for she did not share her thinkings with the village at large,
yet gave me glimpses of them, and so I knew, better than the rest, what
was absorbing her interest. Many a time the idea crossed my mind that
she had a secret—a secret which she was keeping wholly to herself,
as well from me as from the others. This idea had come to me because
several times she had cut a sentence in two and changed the subject when
apparently she was on the verge of a revelation of some sort. I was to
find this secret out, but not just yet.
The day after the conversation which I have been reporting we were
together in the pastures and fell to talking about France, as usual. For
her sake I had always talked hopefully before, but that was mere lying,
for really there was not anything to hang a rag of hope for France upon.
Now it was such a pain to lie to her, and cost me such shame to offer
this treachery to one so snow-pure from lying and treachery, and even
from suspicion of such baseness in others, as she was, that I was
resolved to face about now and begin over again, and never insult her
more with deception. I started on the new policy by saying—still opening
up with a small lie, of course, for habit is habit, and not to be flung
out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time:
“Joan, I have been thinking the thing all over last night, and have
concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the case
of France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since Agincourt;
and that to-day it is more than desperate, it is hopeless.”
I did not look her in the face while I was saying it; it could not be
expected of a person. To break her heart, to crush her hope with a so
frankly brutal speech as that, without one charitable soft place in
it—it seemed a shameful thing, and it was. But when it was out, the
weight gone, and my conscience rising to the surface, I glanced at her
face to see the result.
There was none to see. At least none that I was expecting. There was a
barely perceptible suggestion of wonder in her serious eyes, but that
was all; and she said, in her simple and placid way:
“The case of France hopeless? Why should you think that? Tell me.”
It is a most pleasant thing to find that what you thought would inflict
a hurt upon one whom you honor, has not done it. I was relieved now,
and could say all my say without any furtivenesses and without
embarrassment. So I began:
“Let us put sentiment and patriotic illusions aside, and look at the
facts in the face. What do they say? They speak as plainly as the
figures in a merchant’s account-book. One has only to add the two
columns up to see that the French house is bankrupt, that one-half of
its property is already in the English sheriff’s hands and the other
half in nobody’s—except those of irresponsible raiders and robbers
confessing allegiance to nobody. Our King is shut up with his favorites
and fools in inglorious idleness and poverty in a narrow little patch
of the kingdom—a sort of back lot, as one may say—and has no authority
there or anywhere else, hasn’t a farthing to his name, nor a regiment of
soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not intending to fight, he means to
make no further resistance; in truth, there is but one thing that he is
intending to do—give the whole thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer,
and run away to Scotland. There are the facts. Are they correct?”
“Yes, they are correct.”
“Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in order
to realize what they mean.”
She asked, in an ordinary, level tone:
“What—that the case of France is hopeless?”
“Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible.”
“How can you say that? How can you feel like that?”
“How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the
circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you
really any hope for France—really and actually?”
“Hope—oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep it. Do
not doubt it.”
It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded to-day.
It must be so, or she would see that those figures could mean only one
thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would see. So I said:
“Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head. You
are not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here—I want to make
a picture of them, here on the ground with a stick. Now, this rough
outline is France. Through its middle, east and west, I draw a river.”
“Yes, the Loire.”
“Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight grip
of the English.”
“Yes.”
“And this whole southern half is really in nobody’s hands at all—as our
King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign land.
England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume full
possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France is gone,
France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What was France is
now but a British province. Is this true?”
Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct:
“Yes, it is true.”
“Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is complete:
When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch soldiers, under the
French flag, have won a barren fight or two a few years back, but I
am speaking of French ones. Since eight thousand Englishmen nearly
annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen a dozen years ago at Agincourt,
French courage has been paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day
that if you confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the
French will run.”
“It is a pity, but even these things are true.”
“Then certainly the day for hoping is past.”
I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could not
fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that there
was no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and disappointed
also. She said, without any doubt in her tone:
“France will rise again. You shall see.”
“Rise?—with this burden of English armies on her back!”
“She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!” This with
spirit.
“Without soldiers to fight with?”
“The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will march.”
“March to the rear, as usual?”
“No; to the front—ever to the front—always to the front! You shall see.”
“And the pauper King?”
“He will mount his throne—he will wear his crown.”
“Well, of a truth this makes one’s head dizzy. Why, if I could believe
that in thirty years from now the English domination would be broken
and the French monarch’s head find itself hooped with a real crown of
sovereignty—”
“Both will have happened before two years are sped.”
“Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime impossibilities?”
“God.”
It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.
What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question kept
running in my mind during two or three days. It was inevitable that I
should think of madness. What other way was there to account for such
things? Grieving and brooding over the woes of France had weakened that
strong mind, and filled it with fantastic phantoms—yes, that must be it.
But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was clear
and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the point. No,
there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still the soundest in
the village and the best. She went on thinking for others, planning for
others, sacrificing herself for others, just as always before. She went
on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to
give the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was
a secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it. This was plain.
Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it
happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter
which I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an eyewitness talk
of it before.
I was coming from over the ridge, one day—it was the 15th of May,
’28—and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to step
out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech tree
stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first—then I took a step
backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For
I had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of
playful surprise for her. Think of it—that trivial conceit was neighbor,
with but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event
destined to endure forever in histories and songs.
The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree stood
lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed by gnarled
great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one reposing in the
other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward the ground, and her
air was that of one who is lost to thought, steeped in dreams, and
not conscious of herself or of the world. And now I saw a most strange
thing, for I saw a white shadow come slowly gliding along the grass
toward the Tree. It was of grand proportions—a robed form, with
wings—and the whiteness of this shadow was not like any other whiteness
that we know of, except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even
the lightnings are not so intense as it was, for one can look at them
without hurt, whereas this brilliancy was so blinding that it pained my
eyes and brought the water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving
that I was in the presence of something not of this world. My breath
grew faint and difficult, because of the terror and the awe that
possessed me.
Another strange thing. The wood had been silent—smitten with that deep
stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest, and the wild
creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the birds burst forth
into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it was beyond
belief; and was so eloquent and so moving, withal, that it was plain
it was an act of worship. With the first note of those birds Joan cast
herself upon her knees, and bent her head low and crossed her hands upon
her breast.
She had not seen the shadow yet. Had the song of the birds told her
it was coming? It had that look to me. Then the like of this must have
happened before. Yes, there might be no doubt of that.
The shadow approached Joan slowly; the extremity of it reached her,
flowed over her, clothed her in its awful splendor. In that immortal
light her face, only humanly beautiful before, became divine; flooded
with that transforming glory her mean peasant habit was become like to
the raiment of the sun-clothed children of God as we see them thronging
the terraces of the Throne in our dreams and imaginings.
Presently she rose and stood, with her head still bowed a little, and
with her arms down and the ends of her fingers lightly laced together in
front of her; and standing so, all drenched with that wonderful light,
and yet apparently not knowing it, she seemed to listen—but I heard
nothing. After a little she raised her head, and looked up as one might
look up toward the face of a giant, and then clasped her hands and
lifted them high, imploringly, and began to plead. I heard some of the
words. I heard her say:
“But I am so young! oh, so young to leave my mother and my home and go
out into the strange world to undertake a thing so great! Ah, how can I
talk with men, be comrade with men?—soldiers! It would give me over to
insult, and rude usage, and contempt. How can I go to the great wars,
and lead armies?—I a girl, and ignorant of such things, knowing
nothing of arms, nor how to mount a horse, nor ride it.... Yet—if it is
commanded—”
Her voice sank a little, and was broken by sobs, and I made out no
more of her words. Then I came to myself. I reflected that I had been
intruding upon a mystery of God—and what might my punishment be? I was
afraid, and went deeper into the wood. Then I carved a mark in the bark
of a tree, saying to myself, it may be that I am dreaming and have not
seen this vision at all. I will come again, when I know that I am awake
and not dreaming, and see if this mark is still here; then I shall know.
Chapter 7 She Delivers the Divine Command
I HEARD my name called. It was Joan’s voice. It startled me, for how
could she know I was there? I said to myself, it is part of the dream;
it is all dream—voice, vision and all; the fairies have done this. So I
crossed myself and pronounced the name of God, to break the enchantment.
I knew I was awake now and free from the spell, for no spell can
withstand this exorcism. Then I heard my name called again, and I
stepped at once from under cover, and there indeed was Joan, but not
looking as she had looked in the dream. For she was not crying now, but
was looking as she had used to look a year and a half before, when her
heart was light and her spirits high. Her old-time energy and fire were
back, and a something like exaltation showed itself in her face and
bearing. It was almost as if she had been in a trance all that time and
had come awake again. Really, it was just as if she had been away and
lost, and was come back to us at last; and I was so glad that I felt
like running to call everybody and have them flock around her and give
her welcome. I ran to her excited and said:
“Ah, Joan, I’ve got such a wonderful thing to tell you about! You would
never imagine it. I’ve had a dream, and in the dream I saw you right
here where you are standing now, and—”
But she put up her hand and said:
“It was not a dream.”
It gave me a shock, and I began to feel afraid again.
“Not a dream?” I said, “how can you know about it, Joan?”
“Are you dreaming now?”
“I—I suppose not. I think I am not.”
“Indeed you are not. I know you are not. And you were not dreaming when
you cut the mark in the tree.”
I felt myself turning cold with fright, for now I knew of a certainty
that I had not been dreaming, but had really been in the presence of a
dread something not of this world. Then I remembered that my sinful feet
were upon holy ground—the ground where that celestial shadow had rested.
I moved quickly away, smitten to the bones with fear. Joan followed, and
said:
“Do not be afraid; indeed there is no need. Come with me. We will sit by
the spring and I will tell you all my secret.”
When she was ready to begin, I checked her and said:
“First tell me this. You could not see me in the wood; how did you know
I cut a mark in the tree?”
“Wait a little; I will soon come to that; then you will see.”
“But tell me one thing now; what was that awful shadow that I saw?”
“I will tell you, but do not be disturbed; you are not in danger. It was
the shadow of an archangel—Michael, the chief and lord of the armies of
heaven.”
I could but cross myself and tremble for having polluted that ground
with my feet.
“You were not afraid, Joan? Did you see his face—did you see his form?”
“Yes; I was not afraid, because this was not the first time. I was
afraid the first time.”
“When was that, Joan?”
“It is nearly three years ago now.”
“So long? Have you seen him many times?”
“Yes, many times.”
“It is this, then, that has changed you; it was this that made you
thoughtful and not as you were before. I see it now. Why did you not
tell us about it?”
“It was not permitted. It is permitted now, and soon I shall tell all.
But only you, now. It must remain a secret for a few days still.”
“Has none seen that white shadow before but me?”
“No one. It has fallen upon me before when you and others were present,
but none could see it. To-day it has been otherwise, and I was told why;
but it will not be visible again to any.”
“It was a sign to me, then—and a sign with a meaning of some kind?”
“Yes, but I may not speak of that.”
“Strange—that that dazzling light could rest upon an object before one’s
eyes and not be visible.”
“With it comes speech, also. Several saints come, attended by myriads
of angels, and they speak to me; I hear their voices, but others do not.
They are very dear to me—my Voices; that is what I call them to myself.”
“Joan, what do they tell you?”
“All manner of things—about France, I mean.”
“What things have they been used to tell you?”
She sighed, and said:
“Disasters—only disasters, and misfortunes, and humiliation. There was
naught else to foretell.”
“They spoke of them to you beforehand?” “Yes. So that I knew what was
going to happen before it happened. It made me grave—as you saw. It
could not be otherwise. But always there was a word of hope, too. More
than that: France was to be rescued, and made great and free again. But
how and by whom—that was not told. Not until to-day.” As she said those
last words a sudden deep glow shone in her eyes, which I was to see
there many times in after-days when the bugles sounded the charge and
learn to call it the battle-light. Her breast heaved, and the color
rose in her face. “But to-day I know. God has chosen the meanest of His
creatures for this work; and by His command, and in His protection, and
by His strength, not mine, I am to lead His armies, and win back France,
and set the crown upon the head of His servant that is Dauphin and shall
be King.”
I was amazed, and said:
“You, Joan? You, a child, lead armies?”
“Yes. For one little moment or two the thought crushed me; for it is as
you say—I am only a child; a child and ignorant—ignorant of everything
that pertains to war, and not fitted for the rough life of camps and the
companionship of soldiers. But those weak moments passed; they will not
come again. I am enlisted, I will not turn back, God helping me, till
the English grip is loosed from the throat of France. My Voices have
never told me lies, they have not lied to-day. They say I am to go to
Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs, and he will give me
men-at-arms for escort and send me to the King. A year from now a blow
will be struck which will be the beginning of the end, and the end will
follow swiftly.”
“Where will it be struck?”
“My Voices have not said; nor what will happen this present year, before
it is struck. It is appointed me to strike it, that is all I know; and
follow it with others, sharp and swift, undoing in ten weeks England’s
long years of costly labor, and setting the crown upon the Dauphin’s
head—for such is God’s will; my Voices have said it, and shall I doubt
it? No; it will be as they have said, for they say only that which is
true.”
These were tremendous sayings. They were impossibilities to my reason,
but to my heart they rang true; and so, while my reason doubted, my
heart believed—believed, and held fast to the belief from that day.
Presently I said:
“Joan, I believe the things which you have said, and now I am glad that
I am to march with you to the great wars—that is, if it is with you I am
to march when I go.”
She looked surprised, and said:
“It is true that you will be with me when I go to the wars, but how did
you know?”
“I shall march with you, and so also will Jean and Pierre, but not
Jacques.”
“All true—it is so ordered, as was revealed to me lately, but I did not
know until to-day that the marching would be with me, or that I should
march at all. How did you know these things?”
I told her when it was that she had said them. But she did not remember
about it. So then I knew that she had been asleep, or in a trance or an
ecstasy of some kind, at that time. She bade me keep these and the other
revelations to myself for the present, and I said I would, and kept the
faith I promised.
None who met Joan that day failed to notice the change that had come
over her. She moved and spoke with energy and decision; there was
a strange new fire in her eye, and also a something wholly new and
remarkable in her carriage and in the set of her head. This new light in
the eye and this new bearing were born of the authority and leadership
which had this day been vested in her by the decree of God, and they
asserted that authority as plainly as speech could have done it, yet
without ostentation or bravado. This calm consciousness of command, and
calm unconscious outward expression of it, remained with her thenceforth
until her mission was accomplished.
Like the other villagers, she had always accorded me the deference due
my rank; but now, without word said on either side, she and I changed
places; she gave orders, not suggestions. I received them with the
deference due a superior, and obeyed them without comment. In the
evening she said to me:
“I leave before dawn. No one will know it but you. I go to speak with
the governor of Vaucouleurs as commanded, who will despise me and treat
me rudely, and perhaps refuse my prayer at this time. I go first to
Burey, to persuade my uncle Laxart to go with me, it not being meet that
I go alone. I may need you in Vaucouleurs; for if the governor will not
receive me I will dictate a letter to him, and so must have some one by
me who knows the art of how to write and spell the words. You will go
from here to-morrow in the afternoon, and remain in Vaucouleurs until I
need you.”
I said I would obey, and she went her way. You see how clear a head she
had, and what a just and level judgment. She did not order me to go with
her; no, she would not subject her good name to gossiping remark. She
knew that the governor, being a noble, would grant me, another noble,
audience; but no, you see, she would not have that, either. A poor
peasant-girl presenting a petition through a young nobleman—how would
that look? She always protected her modesty from hurt; and so, for
reward, she carried her good name unsmirched to the end. I knew what I
must do now, if I would have her approval: go to Vaucouleurs, keep out
of her sight, and be ready when wanted.
I went the next afternoon, and took an obscure lodging; the next day I
called at the castle and paid my respects to the governor, who invited
me to dine with him at noon of the following day. He was an ideal
soldier of the time; tall, brawny, gray-headed, rough, full of strange
oaths acquired here and there and yonder in the wars and treasured as if
they were decorations. He had been used to the camp all his life, and to
his notion war was God’s best gift to man. He had his steel cuirass on,
and wore boots that came above his knees, and was equipped with a huge
sword; and when I looked at this martial figure, and heard the marvelous
oaths, and guessed how little of poetry and sentiment might be looked
for in this quarter, I hoped the little peasant-girl would not get the
privilege of confronting this battery, but would have to content herself
with the dictated letter.
I came again to the castle the next day at noon, and was conducted to
the great dining-hall and seated by the side of the governor at a small
table which was raised a couple of steps higher than the general table.
At the small table sat several other guests besides myself, and at the
general table sat the chief officers of the garrison. At the entrance
door stood a guard of halberdiers, in morion and breastplate.
As for talk, there was but one topic, of course—the desperate situation
of France. There was a rumor, some one said, that Salisbury was making
preparations to march against Orleans. It raised a turmoil of excited
conversation, and opinions fell thick and fast. Some believed he would
march at once, others that he could not accomplish the investment before
fall, others that the siege would be long, and bravely contested; but
upon one thing all voices agreed: that Orleans must eventually fall, and
with it France. With that, the prolonged discussion ended, and there was
silence. Every man seemed to sink himself in his own thoughts, and to
forget where he was. This sudden and profound stillness, where before
had been so much animation, was impressive and solemn. Now came a
servant and whispered something to the governor, who said:
“Would talk with me?”
“Yes, your Excellency.”
“H’m! A strange idea, certainly. Bring them in.”
It was Joan and her uncle Laxart. At the spectacle of the great people
the courage oozed out of the poor old peasant and he stopped midway and
would come no further, but remained there with his red nightcap crushed
in his hands and bowing humbly here, there, and everywhere, stupefied
with embarrassment and fear. But Joan came steadily forward, erect and
self-possessed, and stood before the governor. She recognized me, but in
no way indicated it. There was a buzz of admiration, even the governor
contributing to it, for I heard him mutter, “By God’s grace, it is a
beautiful creature!” He inspected her critically a moment or two, then
said:
“Well, what is your errand, my child?”
“My message is to you, Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs,
and it is this: that you will send and tell the Dauphin to wait and not
give battle to his enemies, for God will presently send him help.”
This strange speech amazed the company, and many murmured, “The poor
young thing is demented.” The governor scowled, and said:
“What nonsense is this? The King—or the Dauphin, as you call him—needs
no message of that sort. He will wait, give yourself no uneasiness as to
that. What further do you desire to say to me?”
“This. To beg that you will give me an escort of men-at-arms and send me
to the Dauphin.”
“What for?”
“That he may make me his general, for it is appointed that I shall drive
the English out of France, and set the crown upon his head.”
“What—you? Why, you are but a child!”
“Yet am I appointed to do it, nevertheless.”
“Indeed! And when will all this happen?”
“Next year he will be crowned, and after that will remain master of
France.”
There was a great and general burst of laughter, and when it had
subsided the governor said:
“Who has sent you with these extravagant messages?”
“My Lord.”
“What Lord?”
“The King of Heaven.”
Many murmured, “Ah, poor thing, poor thing!” and others, “Ah, her mind
is but a wreck!” The governor hailed Laxart, and said:
“Harkye!—take this mad child home and whip her soundly. That is the best
cure for her ailment.”
As Joan was moving away she turned and said, with simplicity:
“You refuse me the soldiers, I know not why, for it is my Lord that has
commanded you. Yes, it is He that has made the command; therefore I must
come again, and yet again; then I shall have the men-at-arms.”
There was a great deal of wondering talk, after she was gone; and the
guards and servants passed the talk to the town, the town passed it to
the country; Domremy was already buzzing with it when we got back.
Chapter 8 Why the Scorners Relented
HUMAN NATURE is the same everywhere: it defies success, it has nothing
but scorn for defeat. The village considered that Joan had disgraced it
with her grotesque performance and its ridiculous failure; so all the
tongues were busy with the matter, and as bilious and bitter as they
were busy; insomuch that if the tongues had been teeth she would not
have survived her persecutions. Those persons who did not scold did what
was worse and harder to bear; for they ridiculed her, and mocked at her,
and ceased neither day nor night from their witticisms and jeerings and
laughter. Haumette and Little Mengette and I stood by her, but the
storm was too strong for her other friends, and they avoided her, being
ashamed to be seen with her because she was so unpopular, and because
of the sting of the taunts that assailed them on her account. She shed
tears in secret, but none in public. In public she carried herself
with serenity, and showed no distress, nor any resentment—conduct which
should have softened the feeling against her, but it did not. Her father
was so incensed that he could not talk in measured terms about her wild
project of going to the wars like a man. He had dreamed of her doing
such a thing, some time before, and now he remembered that dream with
apprehension and anger, and said that rather than see her unsex herself
and go away with the armies, he would require her brothers to drown her;
and that if they should refuse, he would do it with his own hands.
But none of these things shook her purpose in the least. Her parents
kept a strict watch upon her to keep her from leaving the village, but
she said her time was not yet; that when the time to go was come she
should know it, and then the keepers would watch in vain.
The summer wasted along; and when it was seen that her purpose continued
steadfast, the parents were glad of a chance which finally offered
itself for bringing her projects to an end through marriage. The Paladin
had the effrontery to pretend that she had engaged herself to him
several years before, and now he claimed a ratification of the
engagement.
She said his statement was not true, and refused to marry him. She was
cited to appear before the ecclesiastical court at Toul to answer
for her perversity; when she declined to have counsel, and elected to
conduct her case herself, her parents and all her ill-wishers rejoiced,
and looked upon her as already defeated. And that was natural enough;
for who would expect that an ignorant peasant-girl of sixteen would be
otherwise than frightened and tongue-tied when standing for the first
time in presence of the practised doctors of the law, and surrounded
by the cold solemnities of a court? Yet all these people were mistaken.
They flocked to Toul to see and enjoy this fright and embarrassment
and defeat, and they had their trouble for their pains. She was modest,
tranquil, and quite at her ease. She called no witnesses, saying she
would content herself with examining the witnesses for the prosecution.
When they had testified, she rose and reviewed their testimony in a few
words, pronounced it vague, confused, and of no force, then she placed
the Paladin again on the stand and began to search him. His previous
testimony went rag by rag to ruin under her ingenious hands, until at
last he stood bare, so to speak, he that had come so richly clothed
in fraud and falsehood. His counsel began an argument, but the court
declined to hear it, and threw out the case, adding a few words of grave
compliment for Joan, and referring to her as “this marvelous child.”
After this victory, with this high praise from so imposing a source
added, the fickle village turned again, and gave Joan countenance,
compliment, and peace. Her mother took her back to her heart, and even
her father relented and said he was proud of her. But the time hung
heavy on her hands, nevertheless, for the siege of Orleans was begun,
the clouds lowered darker and darker over France, and still her Voices
said wait, and gave her no direct commands. The winter set in, and wore
tediously along; but at last there was a change.
BOOK II IN COURT AND CAMP
Chapter 1 Joan Says Good-By
THE 5th of January, 1429, Joan came to me with her uncle Laxart, and
said:
“The time is come. My Voices are not vague now, but clear, and they have
told me what to do. In two months I shall be with the Dauphin.”
Her spirits were high, and her bearing martial. I caught the infection
and felt a great impulse stirring in me that was like what one feels
when he hears the roll of the drums and the tramp of marching men.
“I believe it,” I said.
“I also believe it,” said Laxart. “If she had told me before, that she
was commanded of God to rescue France, I should not have believed; I
should have let her seek the governor by her own ways and held myself
clear of meddling in the matter, not doubting she was mad. But I have
seen her stand before those nobles and mighty men unafraid, and say her
say; and she had not been able to do that but by the help of God. That
I know. Therefore with all humbleness I am at her command, to do with me
as she will.”
“My uncle is very good to me,” Joan said. “I sent and asked him to come
and persuade my mother to let him take me home with him to tend his
wife, who is not well. It is arranged, and we go at dawn to-morrow. From
his house I shall go soon to Vaucouleurs, and wait and strive until my
prayer is granted. Who were the two cavaliers who sat to your left at
the governor’s table that day?”
“One was the Sieur Jean de Novelonpont de Metz, the other the Sieur
Bertrand de Poulengy.”
“Good metal—good metal, both. I marked them for men of mine.... What is
it I see in your face? Doubt?”
I was teaching myself to speak the truth to her, not trimming it or
polishing it; so I said:
“They considered you out of your head, and said so. It is true they
pitied you for being in such misfortune, but still they held you to be
mad.”
This did not seem to trouble her in any way or wound her. She only said:
“The wise change their minds when they perceive that they have been in
error. These will. They will march with me. I shall see them presently....
You seem to doubt again? Do you doubt?”
“N-no. Not now. I was remembering that it was a year ago, and that they
did not belong here, but only chanced to stop a day on their journey.”
“They will come again. But as to matters now in hand; I came to leave
with you some instructions. You will follow me in a few days. Order your
affairs, for you will be absent long.”
“Will Jean and Pierre go with me?”
“No; they would refuse now, but presently they will come, and with them
they will bring my parents’ blessing, and likewise their consent that
I take up my mission. I shall be stronger, then—stronger for that; for
lack of it I am weak now.” She paused a little while, and the tears
gathered in her eyes; then she went on: “I would say good-by to Little
Mengette. Bring her outside the village at dawn; she must go with me a
little of the way—”
“And Haumette?”
She broke down and began to cry, saying:
“No, oh, no—she is too dear to me, I could not bear it, knowing I should
never look upon her face again.”
Next morning I brought Mengette, and we four walked along the road in
the cold dawn till the village was far behind; then the two girls said
their good-bys, clinging about each other’s neck, and pouring out their
grief in loving words and tears, a pitiful sight to see. And Joan took
one long look back upon the distant village, and the Fairy Tree, and the
oak forest, and the flowery plain, and the river, as if she was trying
to print these scenes on her memory so that they would abide there
always and not fade, for she knew she would not see them any more in
this life; then she turned, and went from us, sobbing bitterly. It was
her birthday and mine. She was seventeen years old.
Chapter 2 The Governor Speeds Joan
After a few days, Laxart took Joan to Vaucouleurs, and found lodging
and guardianship for her with Catherine Royer, a wheelwright’s wife, an
honest and good woman. Joan went to mass regularly, she helped do the
housework, earning her keep in that way, and if any wished to talk
with her about her mission—and many did—she talked freely, making no
concealments regarding the matter now. I was soon housed near by, and
witnessed the effects which followed. At once the tidings spread that a
young girl was come who was appointed of God to save France. The common
people flocked in crowds to look at her and speak with her, and her fair
young loveliness won the half of their belief, and her deep earnestness
and transparent sincerity won the other half. The well-to-do remained
away and scoffed, but that is their way.
Next, a prophecy of Merlin’s, more than eight hundred years old, was
called to mind, which said that in a far future time France would be
lost by a woman and restored by a woman. France was now, for the first
time, lost—and by a woman, Isabel of Bavaria, her base Queen; doubtless
this fair and pure young girl was commissioned of Heaven to complete the
prophecy.
This gave the growing interest a new and powerful impulse; the
excitement rose higher and higher, and hope and faith along with it; and
so from Vaucouleurs wave after wave of this inspiring enthusiasm
flowed out over the land, far and wide, invading all the villages and
refreshing and revivifying the perishing children of France; and from
these villages came people who wanted to see for themselves, hear for
themselves; and they did see and hear, and believe. They filled the
town; they more than filled it; inns and lodgings were packed, and
yet half of the inflow had to go without shelter. And still they came,
winter as it was, for when a man’s soul is starving, what does he care
for meat and roof so he can but get that nobler hunger fed? Day after
day, and still day after day the great tide rose. Domremy was dazed,
amazed, stupefied, and said to itself, “Was this world-wonder in our
familiar midst all these years and we too dull to see it?” Jean and
Pierre went out from the village, stared at and envied like the great
and fortunate of the earth, and their progress to Vaucouleurs was like a
triumph, all the country-side flocking to see and salute the brothers
of one with whom angels had spoken face to face, and into whose hands by
command of God they had delivered the destinies of France.
The brothers brought the parents’ blessing and godspeed to Joan, and
their promise to bring it to her in person later; and so, with this
culminating happiness in her heart and the high hope it inspired, she
went and confronted the governor again. But he was no more tractable
than he had been before. He refused to send her to the King. She was
disappointed, but in no degree discouraged. She said:
“I must still come to you until I get the men-at-arms; for so it is
commanded, and I may not disobey. I must go to the Dauphin, though I go
on my knees.”
I and the two brothers were with Joan daily, to see the people that came
and hear what they said; and one day, sure enough, the Sieur Jean de
Metz came. He talked with her in a petting and playful way, as one talks
with children, and said:
“What are you doing here, my little maid? Will they drive the King out
of France, and shall we all turn English?”
She answered him in her tranquil, serious way:
“I am come to bid Robert de Baudricourt take or send me to the King, but
he does not heed my words.”
“Ah, you have an admirable persistence, truly; a whole year has not
turned you from your wish. I saw you when you came before.”
Joan said, as tranquilly as before:
“It is not a wish, it is a purpose. He will grant it. I can wait.”
“Ah, perhaps it will not be wise to make too sure of that, my child.
These governors are stubborn people to deal with. In case he shall not
grant your prayer—”
“He will grant it. He must. It is not a matter of choice.”
The gentleman’s playful mood began to disappear—one could see that, by
his face. Joan’s earnestness was affecting him. It always happened that
people who began in jest with her ended by being in earnest. They soon
began to perceive depths in her that they had not suspected; and then
her manifest sincerity and the rocklike steadfastness of her convictions
were forces which cowed levity, and it could not maintain its
self-respect in their presence. The Sieur de Metz was thoughtful for a
moment or two, then he began, quite soberly:
“Is it necessary that you go to the King soon?—that is, I mean—”
“Before Mid-Lent, even though I wear away my legs to the knees!”
She said it with that sort of repressed fieriness that means so much
when a person’s heart is in a thing. You could see the response in that
nobleman’s face; you could see his eye light up; there was sympathy
there. He said, most earnestly:
“God knows I think you should have the men-at-arms, and that somewhat
would come of it. What is it that you would do? What is your hope and
purpose?”
“To rescue France. And it is appointed that I shall do it. For no one
else in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, no any other, can recover
the kingdom of France, and there is no help but in me.”
The words had a pleading and pathetic sound, and they touched that good
nobleman. I saw it plainly. Joan dropped her voice a little, and said:
“But indeed I would rather spin with my poor mother, for this is not my
calling; but I must go and do it, for it is my Lord’s will.”
“Who is your Lord?”
“He is God.”
Then the Sieur de Metz, following the impressive old feudal fashion,
knelt and laid his hands within Joan’s in sign of fealty, and made oath
that by God’s help he himself would take her to the king.
The next day came the Sieur Bertrand de Poulengy, and he also
pledged his oath and knightly honor to abide with her and follow her
witherosever she might lead.
This day, too, toward evening, a great rumor went flying abroad through
the town—namely, that the very governor himself was going to visit the
young girl in her humble lodgings. So in the morning the streets and
lanes were packed with people waiting to see if this strange thing would
indeed happen. And happen it did. The governor rode in state, attended
by his guards, and the news of it went everywhere, and made a great
sensation, and modified the scoffings of the people of quality and
raised Joan’s credit higher than ever.
The governor had made up his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch
or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was. So he brought a
priest with him to exorcise the devil that was in her in case there
was one there. The priest performed his office, but found no devil. He
merely hurt Joan’s feelings and offended her piety without need, for he
had already confessed her before this, and should have known, if he knew
anything, that devils cannot abide the confessional, but utter cries
of anguish and the most profane and furious cursings whenever they are
confronted with that holy office.
The governor went away troubled and full of thought, and not knowing
what to do. And while he pondered and studied, several days went by and
the 14th of February was come. Then Joan went to the castle and said:
“In God’s name, Robert de Baudricourt, you are too slow about sending
me, and have caused damage thereby, for this day the Dauphin’s cause has
lost a battle near Orleans, and will suffer yet greater injury if you do
not send me to him soon.”
The governor was perplexed by this speech, and said:
“To-day, child, to-day? How can you know what has happened in that
region to-day? It would take eight or ten days for the word to come.”
“My Voices have brought the word to me, and it is true. A battle was
lost to-day, and you are in fault to delay me so.”
The governor walked the floor awhile, talking within himself, but
letting a great oath fall outside now and then; and finally he said:
“Harkye! go in peace, and wait. If it shall turn out as you say, I will
give you the letter and send you to the King, and not otherwise.”
Joan said with fervor:
“Now God be thanked, these waiting days are almost done. In nine days
you will fetch me the letter.”
Already the people of Vaucouleurs had given her a horse and had armed
and equipped her as a soldier. She got no chance to try the horse and
see if she could ride it, for her great first duty was to abide at her
post and lift up the hopes and spirits of all who would come to talk
with her, and prepare them to help in the rescue and regeneration of
the kingdom. This occupied every waking moment she had. But it was no
matter. There was nothing she could not learn—and in the briefest time,
too. Her horse would find this out in the first hour. Meantime the
brothers and I took the horse in turn and began to learn to ride. And we
had teaching in the use of the sword and other arms also.
On the 20th Joan called her small army together—the two knights and
her two brothers and me—for a private council of war. No, it was not a
council, that is not the right name, for she did not consult with us,
she merely gave us orders. She mapped out the course she would travel
toward the King, and did it like a person perfectly versed in geography;
and this itinerary of daily marches was so arranged as to avoid here and
there peculiarly dangerous regions by flank movements—which showed that
she knew her political geography as intimately as she knew her physical
geography; yet she had never had a day’s schooling, of course, and was
without education. I was astonished, but thought her Voices must have
taught her. But upon reflection I saw that this was not so. By her
references to what this and that and the other person had told her,
I perceived that she had been diligently questioning those crowds of
visiting strangers, and that out of them she had patiently dug all this
mass of invaluable knowledge. The two knights were filled with wonder at
her good sense and sagacity.
She commanded us to make preparations to travel by night and sleep by
day in concealment, as almost the whole of our long journey would be
through the enemy’s country.
Also, she commanded that we should keep the date of our departure a
secret, since she meant to get away unobserved. Otherwise we should
be sent off with a grand demonstration which would advertise us to the
enemy, and we should be ambushed and captured somewhere. Finally she
said:
“Nothing remains, now, but that I confide to you the date of our
departure, so that you may make all needful preparation in time, leaving
nothing to be done in haste and badly at the last moment. We march the
23d, at eleven of the clock at night.”
Then we were dismissed. The two knights were startled—yes, and troubled;
and the Sieur Bertrand said:
“Even if the governor shall really furnish the letter and the escort,
he still may not do it in time to meet the date she has chosen. Then how
can she venture to name that date? It is a great risk—a great risk to
select and decide upon the date, in this state of uncertainty.”
I said:
“Since she has named the 23d, we may trust her. The Voices have told
her, I think. We shall do best to obey.”
We did obey. Joan’s parents were notified to come before the 23d, but
prudence forbade that they be told why this limit was named.
All day, the 23d, she glanced up wistfully whenever new bodies of
strangers entered the house, but her parents did not appear. Still she
was not discouraged, but hoped on. But when night fell at last, her
hopes perished, and the tears came; however, she dashed them away, and
said:
“It was to be so, no doubt; no doubt it was so ordered; I must bear it,
and will.”
De Metz tried to comfort her by saying:
“The governor sends no word; it may be that they will come to-morrow,
and—”
He got no further, for she interrupted him, saying:
“To what good end? We start at eleven to-night.”
And it was so. At ten the governor came, with his guard and arms, with
horses and equipment for me and for the brothers, and gave Joan a letter
to the King. Then he took off his sword, and belted it about her waist
with his own hands, and said:
“You said true, child. The battle was lost, on the day you said. So I
have kept my word. Now go—come of it what may.”
Joan gave him thanks, and he went his way.
The lost battle was the famous disaster that is called in history the
Battle of the Herrings.
All the lights in the house were at once put out, and a little while
after, when the streets had become dark and still, we crept stealthily
through them and out at the western gate and rode away under whip and
spur.
Chapter 3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
WE WERE twenty-five strong, and well equipped. We rode in double file,
Joan and her brothers in the center of the column, with Jean de Metz
at the head of it and the Sieur Bertrand at its extreme rear. In two
or three hours we should be in the enemy’s country, and then none
would venture to desert. By and by we began to hear groans and sobs and
execrations from different points along the line, and upon inquiry found
that six of our men were peasants who had never ridden a horse before,
and were finding it very difficult to stay in their saddles, and
moreover were now beginning to suffer considerable bodily torture. They
had been seized by the governor at the last moment and pressed into the
service to make up the tale, and he had placed a veteran alongside of
each with orders to help him stick to the saddle, and kill him if he
tried to desert.
These poor devils had kept quiet as long as they could, but their
physical miseries were become so sharp by this time that they were
obliged to give them vent. But we were within the enemy’s country now,
so there was no help for them, they must continue the march, though
Joan said that if they chose to take the risk they might depart.
They preferred to stay with us. We modified our pace now, and moved
cautiously, and the new men were warned to keep their sorrows to
themselves and not get the command into danger with their curses and
lamentations.
Toward dawn we rode deep into a forest, and soon all but the sentries
were sound asleep in spite of the cold ground and the frosty air.
I woke at noon out of such a solid and stupefying sleep that at first my
wits were all astray, and I did not know where I was nor what had been
happening. Then my senses cleared, and I remembered. As I lay there
thinking over the strange events of the past month or two the thought
came into my mind, greatly surprising me, that one of Joan’s prophecies
had failed; for where were Noel and the Paladin, who were to join us at
the eleventh hour? By this time, you see, I had gotten used to expecting
everything Joan said to come true. So, being disturbed and troubled by
these thoughts, I opened my eyes. Well, there stood the Paladin leaning
against a tree and looking down on me! How often that happens; you think
of a person, or speak of a person, and there he stands before you, and
you not dreaming he is near. It looks as if his being near is really the
thing that makes you think of him, and not just an accident, as people
imagine. Well, be that as it may, there was the Paladin, anyway, looking
down in my face and waiting for me to wake. I was ever so glad to see
him, and jumped up and shook him by the hand, and led him a little way
from the camp—he limping like a cripple—and told him to sit down, and
said:
“Now, where have you dropped down from? And how did you happen to light
in this place? And what do the soldier-clothes mean? Tell me all about
it.”
He answered:
“I marched with you last night.”
“No!” (To myself I said, “The prophecy has not all failed—half of it
has come true.”) “Yes, I did. I hurried up from Domremy to join, and was
within a half a minute of being too late. In fact, I was too late, but I
begged so hard that the governor was touched by my brave devotion to
my country’s cause—those are the words he used—and so he yielded, and
allowed me to come.”
I thought to myself, this is a lie, he is one of those six the governor
recruited by force at the last moment; I know it, for Joan’s prophecy
said he would join at the eleventh hour, but not by his own desire. Then
I said aloud:
“I am glad you came; it is a noble cause, and one should not sit at home
in times like these.”
“Sit at home! I could no more do it than the thunderstone could stay hid
in the clouds when the storm calls it.”
“That is the right talk. It sounds like you.”
That pleased him.
“I’m glad you know me. Some don’t. But they will, presently. They will
know me well enough before I get done with this war.”
“That is what I think. I believe that wherever danger confronts you you
will make yourself conspicuous.”
He was charmed with this speech, and it swelled him up like a bladder.
He said:
“If I know myself—and I think I do—my performances in this campaign will
give you occasion more than once to remember those words.”
“I were a fool to doubt it. That I know.”
“I shall not be at my best, being but a common soldier; still, the
country will hear of me. If I were where I belong; if I were in the
place of La Hire, or Saintrailles, or the Bastard of Orleans—well, I
say nothing. I am not of the talking kind, like Noel Rainguesson and his
sort, I thank God. But it will be something, I take it—a novelty in this
world, I should say—to raise the fame of a private soldier above theirs,
and extinguish the glory of their names with its shadow.”
“Why, look here, my friend,” I said, “do you know that you have hit out
a most remarkable idea there? Do you realize the gigantic proportions
of it? For look you; to be a general of vast renown, what is that?
Nothing—history is clogged and confused with them; one cannot keep their
names in his memory, there are so many. But a common soldier of
supreme renown—why, he would stand alone! He would the be one moon in a
firmament of mustard-seed stars; his name would outlast the human race!
My friend, who gave you that idea?”
He was ready to burst with happiness, but he suppressed betrayal of it
as well as he could. He simply waved the compliment aside with his hand
and said, with complacency:
“It is nothing. I have them often—ideas like that—and even greater ones.
I do not consider this one much.”
“You astonish me; you do, indeed. So it is really your own?”
“Quite. And there is plenty more where it came from”—tapping his head
with his finger, and taking occasion at the same time to cant his morion
over his right ear, which gave him a very self-satisfied air—“I do not
need to borrow my ideas, like Noel Rainguesson.”
“Speaking of Noel, when did you see him last?”
“Half an hour ago. He is sleeping yonder like a corpse. Rode with us
last night.”
I felt a great upleap in my heart, and said to myself, now I am at rest
and glad; I will never doubt her prophecies again. Then I said aloud:
“It gives me joy. It makes me proud of our village. There is not keeping
our lion-hearts at home in these great times, I see that.”
“Lion-heart! Who—that baby? Why, he begged like a dog to be let off.
Cried, and said he wanted to go to his mother. Him a lion-heart!—that
tumble-bug!”
“Dear me, why I supposed he volunteered, of course. Didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, he volunteered the way people do to the headsman. Why, when he
found I was coming up from Domremy to volunteer, he asked me to let
him come along in my protection, and see the crowds and the excitement.
Well, we arrived and saw the torches filing out at the Castle, and ran
there, and the governor had him seized, along with four more, and
he begged to be let off, and I begged for his place, and at last the
governor allowed me to join, but wouldn’t let Noel off, because he was
disgusted with him, he was such a cry-baby. Yes, and much good he’ll
do the King’s service; he’ll eat for six and run for sixteen. I hate a
pygmy with half a heart and nine stomachs!”
“Why, this is very surprising news to me, and I am sorry and
disappointed to hear it. I thought he was a very manly fellow.”
The Paladin gave me an outraged look, and said:
“I don’t see how you can talk like that, I’m sure I don’t. I don’t see
how you could have got such a notion. I don’t dislike him, and I’m not
saying these things out of prejudice, for I don’t allow myself to have
prejudices against people. I like him, and have always comraded with him
from the cradle, but he must allow me to speak my mind about his faults,
and I am willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true
enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they’ll bear inspection—I have that
idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail
and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn’t the
saddle hurt me? Pooh—I was as much at home in it as if I had been born
there. And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. All those
old soldiers admired my riding; they said they had never seen anything
like it. But him—why, they had to hold him on, all the time.”
An odor as of breakfast came stealing through the wood; the Paladin
unconsciously inflated his nostrils in lustful response, and got up and
limped painfully away, saying he must go and look to his horse.
At bottom he was all right and a good-hearted giant, without any harm
in him, for it is no harm to bark, if one stops there and does not bite,
and it is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick.
If this vast structure of brawn and muscle and vanity and foolishness
seemed to have a libelous tongue, what of it? There was no malice behind
it; and besides, the defect was not of his own creation; it was the work
of Noel Rainguesson, who had nurtured it, fostered it, built it up and
perfected it, for the entertainment he got out of it. His careless light
heart had to have somebody to nag and chaff and make fun of, the
Paladin had only needed development in order to meet its requirements,
consequently the development was taken in hand and diligently attended
to and looked after, gnat-and-bull fashion, for years, to the neglect
and damage of far more important concerns. The result was an unqualified
success. Noel prized the society of the Paladin above everybody else’s;
the Paladin preferred anybody’s to Noel’s. The big fellow was often seen
with the little fellow, but it was for the same reason that the bull is
often seen with the gnat.
With the first opportunity, I had a talk with Noel. I welcomed him to
our expedition, and said:
“It was fine and brave of you to volunteer, Noel.”
His eye twinkled, and he answered:
“Yes, it was rather fine, I think. Still, the credit doesn’t all belong
to me; I had help.”
“Who helped you?”
“The governor.”
“How?”
“Well, I’ll tell you the whole thing. I came up from Domremy to see the
crowds and the general show, for I hadn’t ever had any experience of
such things, of course, and this was a great opportunity; but I hadn’t
any mind to volunteer. I overtook the Paladin on the road and let him
have my company the rest of the way, although he did not want it and
said so; and while we were gawking and blinking in the glare of the
governor’s torches they seized us and four more and added us to the
escort, and that is really how I came to volunteer. But, after all, I
wasn’t sorry, remembering how dull life would have been in the village
without the Paladin.”
“How did he feel about it? Was he satisfied?”
“I think he was glad.”
“Why?”
“Because he said he wasn’t. He was taken by surprise, you see, and it is
not likely that he could tell the truth without preparation. Not that
he would have prepared, if he had had the chance, for I do not think he
would. I am not charging him with that. In the same space of time that
he could prepare to speak the truth, he could also prepare to lie;
besides, his judgment would be cool then, and would warn him against
fooling with new methods in an emergency. No, I am sure he was glad,
because he said he wasn’t.”
“Do you think he was very glad?”
“Yes, I know he was. He begged like a slave, and bawled for his mother.
He said his health was delicate, and he didn’t know how to ride a horse,
and he knew he couldn’t outlive the first march. But really he wasn’t
looking as delicate as he was feeling. There was a cask of wine there,
a proper lift for four men. The governor’s temper got afire, and he
delivered an oath at him that knocked up the dust where it struck the
ground, and told him to shoulder that cask or he would carve him to
cutlets and send him home in a basket. The Paladin did it, and that
secured his promotion to a privacy in the escort without any further
debate.”
“Yes, you seem to make it quite plain that he was glad to join—that is,
if your premises are right that you start from. How did he stand the
march last night?”
“About as I did. If he made the more noise, it was the privilege of his
bulk. We stayed in our saddles because we had help. We are equally lame
to-day, and if he likes to sit down, let him; I prefer to stand.”
Chapter 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
WE WERE called to quarters and subjected to a searching inspection by
Joan. Then she made a short little talk in which she said that even the
rude business of war could be conducted better without profanity and
other brutalities of speech than with them, and that she should strictly
require us to remember and apply this admonition. She ordered half an
hour’s horsemanship drill for the novices then, and appointed one of the
veterans to conduct it. It was a ridiculous exhibition, but we learned
something, and Joan was satisfied and complimented us. She did not take
any instruction herself or go through the evolutions and manoeuvres, but
merely sat her horse like a martial little statue and looked on. That
was sufficient for her, you see. She would not miss or forget a detail
of the lesson, she would take it all in with her eye and her mind, and
apply it afterward with as much certainty and confidence as if she had
already practised it.
We now made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues each,
riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving band of Free
Companions. Country-folk were glad to have that sort of people go
by without stopping. Still, they were very wearying marches, and not
comfortable, for the bridges were few and the streams many, and as we
had to ford them we found the water dismally cold, and afterward had to
bed ourselves, still wet, on the frosty or snowy ground, and get warm
as we might and sleep if we could, for it would not have been prudent
to build fires. Our energies languished under these hardships and deadly
fatigues, but Joan’s did not. Her step kept its spring and firmness and
her eye its fire. We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it.
But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the five
nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing, the baths
as cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in addition, and lost two
novices and three veterans in the resulting fights. The news had leaked
out and gone abroad that the inspired Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making
for the King with an escort, and all the roads were being watched now.
These five nights disheartened the command a good deal. This was
aggravated by a discovery which Noel made, and which he promptly made
known at headquarters. Some of the men had been trying to understand why
Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and confident while the strongest
men in the company were fagged with the heavy marches and exposure and
were become morose and irritable. There, it shows you how men can have
eyes and yet not see. All their lives those men had seen their own
women-folks hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields
while the men did the driving. They had also seen other evidences that
women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than men—but
what good had their seeing these things been to them? None. It had
taught them nothing. They were still surprised to see a girl of
seventeen bear the fatigues of war better than trained veterans of the
army. Moreover, they did not reflect that a great soul, with a great
purpose, can make a weak body strong and keep it so; and here was the
greatest soul in the universe; but how could they know that, those dumb
creatures? No, they knew nothing, and their reasonings were of a piece
with their ignorance. They argued and discussed among themselves, with
Noel listening, and arrived at the decision that Joan was a witch, and
had her strange pluck and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to
watch for a safe opportunity to take her life.
To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a very
serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan’s permission to
hang the plotters, but she refused without hesitancy. She said:
“Neither these men nor any others can take my life before my mission is
accomplished, therefore why should I have their blood upon my hands? I
will inform them of this, and also admonish them. Call them before me.”
When they came she made that statement to them in a plain matter-of-fact
way, and just as if the thought never entered her mind that any one
could doubt it after she had given her word that it was true. The men
were evidently amazed and impressed to hear her say such a thing in
such a sure and confident way, for prophecies boldly uttered never fall
barren on superstitious ears. Yes, this speech certainly impressed
them, but her closing remark impressed them still more. It was for the
ringleader, and Joan said it sorrowfully:
“It is a pity that you should plot another’s death when your own is so
close at hand.”
That man’s horse stumbled and fell on him in the first ford which we
crossed that night, and he was drowned before we could help him. We had
no more conspiracies.
This night was harassed with ambuscades, but we got through without
having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile
frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with
a good deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less
reluctant to start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in
the fords and persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient
to get under way and have it over, although there was promise of more
and harder fighting than any of the previous nights had furnished.
Moreover, in front of us about three leagues there was a deep stream
with a frail wooden bridge over it, and as a cold rain mixed with snow
had been falling steadily all day we were anxious to find out whether we
were in a trap or not. If the swollen stream had washed away the bridge,
we might properly consider ourselves trapped and cut off from escape.
As soon as it was dark we filed out from the depth of the forest where
we had been hidden and began the march. From the time that we had begun
to encounter ambushes Joan had ridden at the head of the column, and she
took this post now. By the time we had gone a league the rain and snow
had turned to sleet, and under the impulse of the storm-wind it lashed
my face like whips, and I envied Joan and the knights, who could close
their visors and shut up their heads in their helmets as in a box. Now,
out of the pitchy darkness and close at hand, came the sharp command:
“Halt!”
We obeyed. I made out a dim mass in front of us which might be a body of
horsemen, but one could not be sure. A man rode up and said to Joan in a
tone of reproof:
“Well, you have taken your time, truly. And what have you found out? Is
she still behind us, or in front?”
Joan answered in a level voice:
“She is still behind.”
This news softened the stranger’s tone. He said:
“If you know that to be true, you have not lost your time, Captain. But
are you sure? How do you know?”
“Because I have seen her.”
“Seen her! Seen the Virgin herself?”
“Yes, I have been in her camp.”
“Is it possible! Captain Raymond, I ask you to pardon me for speaking in
that tone just now. You have performed a daring and admirable service.
Where was she camped?”
“In the forest, not more than a league from here.”
“Good! I was afraid we might be still behind her, but now that we know
she is behind us, everything is safe. She is our game. We will hang her.
You shall hang her yourself. No one has so well earned the privilege of
abolishing this pestilent limb of Satan.”
“I do not know how to thank you sufficiently. If we catch her, I—”
“If! I will take care of that; give yourself no uneasiness. All I want
is just a look at her, to see what the imp is like that has been able to
make all this noise, then you and the halter may have her. How many men
has she?”
“I counted but eighteen, but she may have had two or three pickets out.”
“Is that all? It won’t be a mouthful for my force. Is it true that she
is only a girl?”
“Yes; she is not more than seventeen.”
“It passes belief! Is she robust, or slender?”
“Slender.”
The officer pondered a moment or two, then he said:
“Was she preparing to break camp?”
“Not when I had my last glimpse of her.”
“What was she doing?”
“She was talking quietly with an officer.”
“Quietly? Not giving orders?”
“No, talking as quietly as we are now.”
“That is good. She is feeling a false security. She would have been
restless and fussy else—it is the way of her sex when danger is about.
As she was making no preparation to break camp—”
“She certainly was not when I saw her last.”
“—and was chatting quietly and at her ease, it means that this weather
is not to her taste. Night-marching in sleet and wind is not for chits
of seventeen. No; she will stay where she is. She has my thanks. We will
camp, ourselves; here is as good a place as any. Let us get about it.”
“If you command it—certainly. But she has two knights with her. They
might force her to march, particularly if the weather should improve.”
I was scared, and impatient to be getting out of this peril, and it
distressed and worried me to have Joan apparently set herself to work
to make delay and increase the danger—still, I thought she probably knew
better than I what to do. The officer said:
“Well, in that case we are here to block the way.”
“Yes, if they come this way. But if they should send out spies, and find
out enough to make them want to try for the bridge through the woods? Is
it best to allow the bridge to stand?”
It made me shiver to hear her.
The officer considered awhile, then said:
“It might be well enough to send a force to destroy the bridge. I was
intending to occupy it with the whole command, but that is not necessary
now.”
Joan said, tranquilly:
“With your permission, I will go and destroy it myself.”
Ah, now I saw her idea, and was glad she had had the cleverness to
invent it and the ability to keep her head cool and think of it in that
tight place. The officer replied:
“You have it, Captain, and my thanks. With you to do it, it will be well
done; I could send another in your place, but not a better.”
They saluted, and we moved forward. I breathed freer. A dozen times I
had imagined I heard the hoofbeats of the real Captain Raymond’s troop
arriving behind us, and had been sitting on pins and needles all the
while that that conversation was dragging along. I breathed freer, but
was still not comfortable, for Joan had given only the simple command,
“Forward!” Consequently we moved in a walk. Moved in a dead walk past
a dim and lengthening column of enemies at our side. The suspense was
exhausting, yet it lasted but a short while, for when the enemy’s bugles
sang the “Dismount!” Joan gave the word to trot, and that was a great
relief to me. She was always at herself, you see. Before the command
to dismount had been given, somebody might have wanted the countersign
somewhere along that line if we came flying by at speed, but now we
seemed to be on our way to our allotted camping position, so we were
allowed to pass unchallenged. The further we went the more formidable
was the strength revealed by the hostile force. Perhaps it was only a
hundred or two, but to me it seemed a thousand. When we passed the
last of these people I was thankful, and the deeper we plowed into the
darkness beyond them the better I felt. I came nearer and nearer to
feeling good, for an hour; then we found the bridge still standing,
and I felt entirely good. We crossed it and destroyed it, and then I
felt—but I cannot describe what I felt. One has to feel it himself in
order to know what it is like.
We had expected to hear the rush of a pursuing force behind us, for
we thought that the real Captain Raymond would arrive and suggest that
perhaps the troop that had been mistaken for his belonged to the Virgin
of Vaucouleurs; but he must have been delayed seriously, for when we
resumed our march beyond the river there were no sounds behind us except
those which the storm was furnishing.
I said that Joan had harvested a good many compliments intended for
Captain Raymond, and that he would find nothing of a crop left but a
dry stubble of reprimands when he got back, and a commander just in the
humor to superintend the gathering of it in.
Joan said:
“It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop for
granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have camped without
sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had been left unadvised,
and none are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things
worthy of blame themselves.”
The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan’s naive way of referring to her
advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was
saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he
went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had
not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, and
she said:
“I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for
that would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him, perhaps that
made them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I knew if I have done
wrong.”
She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and
necessities of war deceptions that help one’s own cause and hurt the
enemy’s were always permissible; but she was not quite satisfied with
that, and thought that even when a great cause was in danger one ought
to have the privilege of trying honorable ways first. Jean said:
“Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart’s to
nurse his wife, but you didn’t say you were going further, yet you did
go on to Vaucouleurs. There!”
“I see now,” said Joan, sorrowfully. “I told no lie, yet I deceived. I
had tried all other ways first, but I could not get away, and I had
to get away. My mission required it. I did wrong, I think, and am to
blame.”
She was silent a moment, turning the matter over in her mind, then she
added, with quiet decision, “But the thing itself was right, and I would
do it again.”
It seemed an over-nice distinction, but nobody said anything. If we had
known her as well as she knew herself, and as her later history revealed
her to us, we should have perceived that she had a clear meaning there,
and that her position was not identical with ours, as we were supposing,
but occupied a higher plane. She would sacrifice herself—and her best
self; that is, her truthfulness—to save her cause; but only that; she
would not buy her life at that cost; whereas our war-ethics permitted
the purchase of our lives, or any mere military advantage, small or
great, by deception. Her saying seemed a commonplace at the time, the
essence of its meaning escaping us; but one sees now that it contained a
principle which lifted it above that and made it great and fine.
Presently the wind died down, the sleet stopped falling, and the cold
was less severe. The road was become a bog, and the horses labored
through it at a walk—they could do no better. As the heavy time wore
on, exhaustion overcame us, and we slept in our saddles. Not even the
dangers that threatened us could keep us awake.
This tenth night seemed longer than any of the others, and of course
it was the hardest, because we had been accumulating fatigue from the
beginning, and had more of it on hand now than at any previous time.
But we were not molested again. When the dull dawn came at last we saw
a river before us and we knew it was the Loire; we entered the town of
Gien, and knew we were in a friendly land, with the hostiles all behind
us. That was a glad morning for us.
We were a worn and bedraggled and shabby-looking troop; and still, as
always, Joan was the freshest of us all, in both body and spirits. We
had averaged above thirteen leagues a night, by tortuous and wretched
roads. It was a remarkable march, and shows what men can do when they
have a leader with a determined purpose and a resolution that never
flags.
Chapter 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
WE RESTED and otherwise refreshed ourselves two or three hours at Gien,
but by that time the news was abroad that the young girl commissioned
of God to deliver France was come; wherefore, such a press of people
flocked to our quarters to get sight of her that it seemed best to seek
a quieter place; so we pushed on and halted at a small village called
Fierbois.
We were now within six leagues of the King, who was at the Castle of
Chinon. Joan dictated a letter to him at once, and I wrote it. In it she
said she had come a hundred and fifty leagues to bring him good news,
and begged the privilege of delivering it in person. She added that
although she had never seen him she would know him in any disguise and
would point him out.
The two knights rode away at once with the letter. The troop slept
all the afternoon, and after supper we felt pretty fresh and fine,
especially our little group of young Domremians. We had the comfortable
tap-room of the village inn to ourselves, and for the first time in ten
unspeakably long days were exempt from bodings and terrors and hardships
and fatiguing labors. The Paladin was suddenly become his ancient
self again, and was swaggering up and down, a very monument of
self-complacency. Noel Rainguesson said:
“I think it is wonderful, the way he has brought us through.”
“Who?” asked Jean.
“Why, the Paladin.”
The Paladin seemed not to hear.
“What had he to do with it?” asked Pierre d’Arc.
“Everything. It was nothing but Joan’s confidence in his discretion that
enabled her to keep up her heart. She could depend on us and on herself
for valor, but discretion is the winning thing in war, after all;
discretion is the rarest and loftiest of qualities, and he has got more
of it than any other man in France—more of it, perhaps, than any other
sixty men in France.”
“Now you are getting ready to make a fool of yourself, Noel
Rainguesson,” said the Paladin, “and you want to coil some of that long
tongue of yours around your neck and stick the end of it in your ear,
then you’ll be the less likely to get into trouble.”
“I didn’t know he had more discretion than other people,” said Pierre,
“for discretion argues brains, and he hasn’t any more brains than the
rest of us, in my opinion.”
“No, you are wrong there. Discretion hasn’t anything to do with brains;
brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels.
Perfect discretion means absence of brains. Discretion is a quality
of the heart—solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through
feeling. We know this because if it were an intellectual quality it
would only perceive a danger, for instance, where a danger exists;
whereas—”
“Hear him twaddle—the damned idiot!” muttered the Paladin.
“—whereas, it being purely a quality of the heart, and proceeding by
feeling, not reason, its reach is correspondingly wider and sublimer,
enabling it to perceive and avoid dangers that haven’t any existence at
all; as, for instance, that night in the fog, when the Paladin took his
horse’s ears for hostile lances and got off and climbed a tree—”
“It’s a lie! a lie without shadow of foundation, and I call upon you
all to beware you give credence to the malicious inventions of this
ramshackle slander-mill that has been doing its best to destroy my
character for years, and will grind up your own reputations for you
next. I got off to tighten my saddle-girth—I wish I may die in my tracks
if it isn’t so—and whoever wants to believe it can, and whoever don’t
can let it alone.”
“There, that is the way with him, you see; he never can discuss a theme
temperately, but always flies off the handle and becomes disagreeable.
And you notice his defect of memory. He remembers getting off his horse,
but forgets all the rest, even the tree. But that is natural; he would
remember getting off the horse because he was so used to doing it.
He always did it when there was an alarm and the clash of arms at the
front.”
“Why did he choose that time for it?” asked Jean.
“I don’t know. To tighten up his girth, he thinks, to climb a tree, I
think; I saw him climb nine trees in a single night.”
“You saw nothing of the kind! A person that can lie like that deserves
no one’s respect. I ask you all to answer me. Do you believe what this
reptile has said?”
All seemed embarrassed, and only Pierre replied. He said, hesitatingly:
“I—well, I hardly know what to say. It is a delicate situation. It seems
offensive to me to refuse to believe a person when he makes so direct a
statement, and yet I am obliged to say, rude as it may appear, that I
am not able to believe the whole of it—no, I am not able to believe that
you climbed nine trees.”
“There!” cried the Paladin; “now what do you think of yourself, Noel
Rainguesson? How many do you believe I climbed, Pierre?”
“Only eight.”
The laughter that followed inflamed the Paladin’s anger to white heat,
and he said:
“I bide my time—I bide my time. I will reckon with you all, I promise
you that!”
“Don’t get him started,” Noel pleaded; “he is a perfect lion when he
gets started. I saw enough to teach me that, after the third skirmish.
After it was over I saw him come out of the bushes and attack a dead man
single-handed.”
“It is another lie; and I give you fair warning that you are going too
far. You will see me attack a live one if you are not careful.”
“Meaning me, of course. This wounds me more than any number of injurious
and unkind speeches could do. In gratitude to one’s benefactor—”
“Benefactor? What do I owe you, I should like to know?”
“You owe me your life. I stood between the trees and the foe, and kept
hundreds and thousands of the enemy at bay when they were thirsting for
your blood. And I did not do it to display my daring. I did it because I
loved you and could not live without you.”
“There—you have said enough! I will not stay here to listen to
these infamies. I can endure your lies, but not your love. Keep that
corruption for somebody with a stronger stomach than mine. And I want to
say this, before I go. That you people’s small performances might appear
the better and win you the more glory, I hid my own deeds through all
the march. I went always to the front, where the fighting was thickest,
to be remote from you in order that you might not see and be discouraged
by the things I did to the enemy. It was my purpose to keep this a
secret in my own breast, but you force me to reveal it. If you ask for
my witnesses, yonder they lie, on the road we have come. I found that
road mud, I paved it with corpses. I found that country sterile, I
fertilized it with blood. Time and again I was urged to go to the rear
because the command could not proceed on account of my dead. And yet
you, you miscreant, accuse me of climbing trees! Pah!”
And he strode out, with a lofty air, for the recital of his imaginary
deeds had already set him up again and made him feel good.
Next day we mounted and faced toward Chinon. Orleans was at our back
now, and close by, lying in the strangling grip of the English; soon,
please God, we would face about and go to their relief. From Gien the
news had spread to Orleans that the peasant Maid of Vaucouleurs was on
her way, divinely commissioned to raise the siege. The news made a great
excitement and raised a great hope—the first breath of hope those poor
souls had breathed in five months. They sent commissioners at once to
the King to beg him to consider this matter, and not throw this help
lightly away. These commissioners were already at Chinon by this time.
When we were half-way to Chinon we happened upon yet one more squad
of enemies. They burst suddenly out of the woods, and in considerable
force, too; but we were not the apprentices we were ten or twelve days
before; no, we were seasoned to this kind of adventure now; our hearts
did not jump into our throats and our weapons tremble in our hands. We
had learned to be always in battle array, always alert, and always ready
to deal with any emergency that might turn up. We were no more dismayed
by the sight of those people than our commander was. Before they could
form, Joan had delivered the order, “Forward!” and we were down upon
them with a rush. They stood no chance; they turned tail and scattered,
we plowing through them as if they had been men of straw. That was our
last ambuscade, and it was probably laid for us by that treacherous
rascal, the King’s own minister and favorite, De la Tremouille.
We housed ourselves in an inn, and soon the town came flocking to get a
glimpse of the Maid.
Ah, the tedious King and his tedious people! Our two good knights
came presently, their patience well wearied, and reported. They and we
reverently stood—as becomes persons who are in the presence of kings and
the superiors of kings—until Joan, troubled by this mark of homage and
respect, and not content with it nor yet used to it, although we had not
permitted ourselves to do otherwise since the day she prophesied that
wretched traitor’s death and he was straightway drowned, thus confirming
many previous signs that she was indeed an ambassador commissioned of
God, commanded us to sit; then the Sieur de Metz said to Joan:
“The King has got the letter, but they will not let us have speech with
him.”
“Who is it that forbids?”
“None forbids, but there be three or four that are nearest his
person—schemers and traitors every one—that put obstructions in the
way, and seek all ways, by lies and pretexts, to make delay. Chiefest of
these are Georges de la Tremouille and that plotting fox, the Archbishop
of Rheims. While they keep the King idle and in bondage to his sports
and follies, they are great and their importance grows; whereas if ever
he assert himself and rise and strike for crown and country like a man,
their reign is done. So they but thrive, they care not if the crown go
to destruction and the King with it.”
“You have spoken with others besides these?”
“Not of the Court, no—the Court are the meek slaves of those reptiles,
and watch their mouths and their actions, acting as they act, thinking
as they think, saying as they say; wherefore they are cold to us, and
turn aside and go another way when we appear. But we have spoken with
the commissioners from Orleans. They said with heat: ‘It is a marvel
that any man in such desperate case as is the King can moon around in
this torpid way, and see his all go to ruin without lifting a finger to
stay the disaster. What a most strange spectacle it is! Here he is,
shut up in this wee corner of the realm like a rat in a trap; his
royal shelter this huge gloomy tomb of a castle, with wormy rags for
upholstery and crippled furniture for use, a very house of desolation;
in his treasure forty francs, and not a farthing more, God be witness!
no army, nor any shadow of one; and by contrast with his hungry poverty
you behold this crownless pauper and his shoals of fools and favorites
tricked out in the gaudiest silks and velvets you shall find in any
Court in Christendom. And look you, he knows that when our city falls—as
fall it surely will except succor come swiftly—France falls; he knows
that when that day comes he will be an outlaw and a fugitive, and that
behind him the English flag will float unchallenged over every acre of
his great heritage; he knows these things, he knows that our faithful
city is fighting all solitary and alone against disease, starvation, and
the sword to stay this awful calamity, yet he will not strike one blow
to save her, he will not hear our prayers, he will not even look
upon our faces.’ That is what the commissioners said, and they are in
despair.”
Joan said, gently:
“It is pity, but they must not despair. The Dauphin will hear them
presently. Tell them so.”
She almost always called the King the Dauphin. To her mind he was not
King yet, not being crowned.
“We will tell them so, and it will content them, for they believe you
come from God. The Archbishop and his confederate have for backer that
veteran soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Grand Master of the Palace, a worthy
man, but simply a soldier, with no head for any greater matter. He
cannot make out to see how a country-girl, ignorant of war, can take a
sword in her small hand and win victories where the trained generals of
France have looked for defeats only, for fifty years—and always found
them. And so he lifts his frosty mustache and scoffs.”
“When God fights it is but small matter whether the hand that bears His
sword is big or little. He will perceive this in time. Is there none in
that Castle of Chinon who favors us?”
“Yes, the King’s mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, who is wise
and good. She spoke with the Sieur Bertrand.”
“She favors us, and she hates those others, the King’s beguilers,” said
Bertrand. “She was full of interest, and asked a thousand questions, all
of which I answered according to my ability. Then she sat thinking over
these replies until I thought she was lost in a dream and would wake no
more. But it was not so. At last she said, slowly, and as if she
were talking to herself: ‘A child of seventeen—a
girl—country-bred—untaught—ignorant of war, the use of arms, and
the conduct of battles—modest, gentle, shrinking—yet throws away her
shepherd’s crook and clothes herself in steel, and fights her way
through a hundred and fifty leagues of fear, and comes—she to whom a
king must be a dread and awful presence—and will stand up before such
an one and say, Be not afraid, God has sent me to save you! Ah, whence
could come a courage and conviction so sublime as this but from very God
Himself!’ She was silent again awhile, thinking and making up her mind;
then she said, ‘And whether she comes of God or no, there is that in
her heart that raises her above men—high above all men that breathe in
France to-day—for in her is that mysterious something that puts heart
into soldiers, and turns mobs of cowards into armies of fighters that
forget what fear is when they are in that presence—fighters who go into
battle with joy in their eyes and songs on their lips, and sweep over
the field like a storm—that is the spirit that can save France, and that
alone, come it whence it may! It is in her, I do truly believe, for what
else could have borne up that child on that great march, and made her
despise its dangers and fatigues? The King must see her face to face—and
shall!’ She dismissed me with those good words, and I know her promise
will be kept. They will delay her all they can—those animals—but she
will not fail in the end.”
“Would she were King!” said the other knight, fervently. “For there is
little hope that the King himself can be stirred out of his lethargy. He
is wholly without hope, and is only thinking of throwing away everything
and flying to some foreign land. The commissioners say there is a
spell upon him that makes him hopeless—yes, and that it is shut up in a
mystery which they cannot fathom.”
“I know the mystery,” said Joan, with quiet confidence; “I know it,
and he knows it, but no other but God. When I see him I will tell him a
secret that will drive away his trouble, then he will hold up his head
again.”
I was miserable with curiosity to know what it was that she would tell
him, but she did not say, and I did not expect she would. She was but a
child, it is true; but she was not a chatterer to tell great matters and
make herself important to little people; no, she was reserved, and kept
things to herself, as the truly great always do.
The next day Queen Yolande got one victory over the King’s keepers,
for, in spite of their protestations and obstructions, she procured an
audience for our two knights, and they made the most they could out
of their opportunity. They told the King what a spotless and beautiful
character Joan was, and how great and noble a spirit animated her, and
they implored him to trust in her, believe in her, and have faith that
she was sent to save France. They begged him to consent to see her. He
was strongly moved to do this, and promised that he would not drop the
matter out of his mind, but would consult with his council about it.
This began to look encouraging. Two hours later there was a great
stir below, and the innkeeper came flying up to say a commission of
illustrious ecclesiastics was come from the King—from the King his
very self, understand!—think of this vast honor to his humble little
hostelry!—and he was so overcome with the glory of it that he could
hardly find breath enough in his excited body to put the facts
into words. They were come from the King to speak with the Maid of
Vaucouleurs. Then he flew downstairs, and presently appeared again,
backing into the room, and bowing to the ground with every step, in
front of four imposing and austere bishops and their train of servants.
Joan rose, and we all stood. The bishops took seats, and for a while
no word was said, for it was their prerogative to speak first, and they
were so astonished to see what a child it was that was making such a
noise in the world and degrading personages of their dignity to the base
function of ambassadors to her in her plebeian tavern, that they could
not find any words to say at first. Then presently their spokesman told
Joan they were aware that she had a message for the King, wherefore she
was now commanded to put it into words, briefly and without waste of
time or embroideries of speech.
As for me, I could hardly contain my joy—our message was to reach the
King at last! And there was the same joy and pride and exultation in the
faces of our knights, too, and in those of Joan’s brothers. And I knew
that they were all praying—as I was—that the awe which we felt in the
presence of these great dignitaries, and which would have tied our
tongues and locked our jaws, would not affect her in the like degree,
but that she would be enabled to word her message well, and with little
stumbling, and so make a favorable impression here, where it would be so
valuable and so important.
Ah, dear, how little we were expecting what happened then! We were
aghast to hear her say what she said. She was standing in a reverent
attitude, with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her; for
she was always reverent toward the consecrated servants of God. When
the spokesman had finished, she raised her head and set her calm eye on
those faces, not any more disturbed by their state and grandeur than a
princess would have been, and said, with all her ordinary simplicity and
modesty of voice and manner:
“Ye will forgive me, reverend sirs, but I have no message save for the
King’s ear alone.”
Those surprised men were dumb for a moment, and their faces flushed
darkly; then the spokesman said:
“Hark ye, to you fling the King’s command in his face and refuse to
deliver this message of yours to his servants appointed to receive it?”
“God has appointed me to receive it, and another’s commandment may not
take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for his grace the
Dauphin.”
“Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and waste no
more time about it.”
“You err indeed, most reverend fathers in God, and it is not well. I am
not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the Dauphin to
his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his head.”
“Is that the message you send to the King?”
But Joan only said, in the simple fashion which was her wont:
“Ye will pardon me for reminding you again—but I have no message to send
to any one.”
The King’s messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the place
without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they passed.
Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster.
Our precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan’s
conduct, she who had been so wise until this fatal hour. At last the
Sieur Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this great
chance to get her message to the King go by.
“Who sent them here?” she asked.
“The King.”
“Who moved the King to send them?” She waited for an answer; none came,
for we began to see what was in her mind—so she answered herself: “The
Dauphin’s council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the
Dauphin’s weal, or are they friends?”
“Enemies,” answered the Sieur Bertrand.
“If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose
traitors and tricksters to send it by?”
I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none
found anything to say. Then she went on:
“They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get
my message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its
purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this—to move the
Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me
to the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact
words, and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and
supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make
them live, where were the value of that argument—whom could it convince?
Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear.”
The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to
himself:
“She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is said.”
It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was
the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think
how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to
penetrate the cunning devices of a King’s trained advisers and defeat
them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and
spoke no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage,
fortitude, endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties—in
all things, indeed, that make a good and trusty soldier and perfect
him for his post; now we were beginning to feel that maybe there
were greatnesses in her brain that were even greater than these great
qualities of the heart. It set us thinking.
What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was
obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her own and
stand her ground like that, and he asserted himself sufficiently to put
his respect into an act instead of into polite and empty words. He moved
Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her, with us her servants, in the
Castle of Courdray, personally confiding her to the care of Madame de
Bellier, wife of old Raoul de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course,
this royal attention had an immediate result: all the great lords
and ladies of the Court began to flock there to see and listen to the
wonderful girl-soldier that all the world was talking about, and who had
answered the King’s mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed
them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious
eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that
there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was
not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the
mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame.
She always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the
low could come within the sound of her voice and the sight of her face
and go out from her presence indifferent.
Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King
WELL, anything to make delay. The King’s council advised him against
arriving at a decision in our matter too precipitately. He arrive at a
decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of priests—always
priests—into Lorraine to inquire into Joan’s character and history—a
matter which would consume several weeks, of course. You see how
fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the
fire when a man’s house was burning down, and they waited till they
could send into another country to find out if he had always kept the
Sabbath or not, before letting him try.
So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways, but
not in all, for we had one great anticipation in front of us; we had
never seen a king, and now some day we should have that prodigious
spectacle to see and to treasure in our memories all our lives; so we
were on the lookout, and always eager and watching for the chance. The
others were doomed to wait longer than I, as it turned out. One day
great news came—the Orleans commissioners, with Yolande and our knights,
had at last turned the council’s position and persuaded the King to see
Joan.
Joan received the immense news gratefully but without losing her head,
but with us others it was otherwise; we could not eat or sleep or do any
rational thing for the excitement and the glory of it. During two days
our pair of noble knights were in distress and trepidation on Joan’s
account, for the audience was to be at night, and they were afraid that
Joan would be so paralyzed by the glare of light from the long files
of torches, the solemn pomps and ceremonies, the great concourse of
renowned personages, the brilliant costumes, and the other splendors
of the Court, that she, a simple country-maid, and all unused to such
things, would be overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure.
No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would
Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its
small King and his butterfly dukelets?—she who had spoken face to face
with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue
of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon
myriads, like a measureless fan of light, a glory like the glory of the
sun streaming from each of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance
filling the deeps of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not.
Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression upon
the King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her clothed in the
richest stuffs, wrought upon the princeliest pattern, and set off with
jewels; but in that she had to be disappointed, of course, Joan not
being persuadable to it, but begging to be simply and sincerely dressed,
as became a servant of God, and one sent upon a mission of a serious
sort and grave political import. So then the gracious Queen imagined and
contrived that simple and witching costume which I have described to
you so many times, and which I cannot think of even now in my dull age
without being moved just as rhythmical and exquisite music moves one;
for that was music, that dress—that is what it was—music that one saw
with the eyes and felt in the heart. Yes, she was a poem, she was a
dream, she was a spirit when she was clothed in that.
She kept that raiment always, and wore it several times upon occasions
of state, and it is preserved to this day in the Treasury of Orleans,
with two of her swords, and her banner, and other things now sacred
because they had belonged to her.
At the appointed time the Count of Vendome, a great lord of the court,
came richly clothed, with his train of servants and assistants, to
conduct Joan to the King, and the two knights and I went with her, being
entitled to this privilege by reason of our official positions near her
person.
When we entered the great audience-hall, there it all was just as I have
already painted it. Here were ranks of guards in shining armor and with
polished halberds; two sides of the hall were like flower-gardens for
variety of color and the magnificence of the costumes; light streamed
upon these masses of color from two hundred and fifty flambeaux. There
was a wide free space down the middle of the hall, and at the end of it
was a throne royally canopied, and upon it sat a crowned and sceptered
figure nobly clothed and blazing with jewels.
It is true that Joan had been hindered and put off a good while, but
now that she was admitted to an audience at last, she was received with
honors granted to only the greatest personages. At the entrance door
stood four heralds in a row, in splendid tabards, with long slender
silver trumpets at their mouths, with square silken banners depending
from them embroidered with the arms of France. As Joan and the Count
passed by, these trumpets gave forth in unison one long rich note, and
as we moved down the hall under the pictured and gilded vaulting, this
was repeated at every fifty feet of our progress—six times in all. It
made our good knights proud and happy, and they held themselves erect,
and stiffened their stride, and looked fine and soldierly. They were
not expecting this beautiful and honorable tribute to our little
country-maid.
Joan walked two yards behind the Count, we three walked two yards behind
Joan. Our solemn march ended when we were as yet some eight or ten steps
from the throne. The Count made a deep obeisance, pronounced Joan’s
name, then bowed again and moved to his place among a group of officials
near the throne. I was devouring the crowned personage with all my eyes,
and my heart almost stood still with awe.
The eyes of all others were fixed upon Joan in a gaze of wonder which
was half worship, and which seemed to say, “How sweet—how lovely—how
divine!” All lips were parted and motionless, which was a sure sign that
those people, who seldom forget themselves, had forgotten themselves
now, and were not conscious of anything but the one object they were
gazing upon. They had the look of people who are under the enchantment
of a vision.
Then they presently began to come to life again, rousing themselves out
of the spell and shaking it off as one drives away little by little a
clinging drowsiness or intoxication. Now they fixed their attention
upon Joan with a strong new interest of another sort; they were full of
curiosity to see what she would do—they having a secret and particular
reason for this curiosity. So they watched. This is what they saw:
She made no obeisance, nor even any slight inclination of her head, but
stood looking toward the throne in silence. That was all there was to
see at present.
I glanced up at De Metz, and was shocked at the paleness of his face. I
whispered and said:
“What is it, man, what is it?”
His answering whisper was so weak I could hardly catch it:
“They have taken advantage of the hint in her letter to play a trick
upon her! She will err, and they will laugh at her. That is not the King
that sits there.”
Then I glanced at Joan. She was still gazing steadfastly toward the
throne, and I had the curious fancy that even her shoulders and the back
of her head expressed bewilderment. Now she turned her head slowly, and
her eye wandered along the lines of standing courtiers till it fell
upon a young man who was very quietly dressed; then her face lighted
joyously, and she ran and threw herself at his feet, and clasped his
knees, exclaiming in that soft melodious voice which was her birthright
and was now charged with deep and tender feeling:
“God of his grace give you long life, O dear and gentle Dauphin!”
In his astonishment and exultation De Metz cried out:
“By the shadow of God, it is an amazing thing!” Then he mashed all the
bones of my hand in his grateful grip, and added, with a proud shake of
his mane, “Now, what have these painted infidels to say!”
Meantime the young person in the plain clothes was saying to Joan:
“Ah, you mistake, my child, I am not the King. There he is,” and he
pointed to the throne.
The knight’s fac
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