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Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Volume 2

by Mark Twain · English · Gutenberg #2875 · 408,622 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc — Volume 2

Author: Mark Twain


        
Release date: September 15, 2004 [eBook #2875]
                Most recently updated: February 24, 2018

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by David Reed, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC — VOLUME 2 ***




 Produced by David Reed; HTML file by David Widger








PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF

JOAN OF ARC

 VOLUME 2 (of 2)

by Mark Twain



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC

 by The Sieur Louis De Conte

 (her page and secretary)

In Two Volumes Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern
English from the original unpublished manuscript in the National
Archives of France



Contents


PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC


BOOK II -- IN COURT AND CAMP (Continued)

28 Joan Foretells Her Doom

29 Fierce Talbot Reconsiders

30 The Red Field of Patay

31 France Begins to Live Again

32 The Joyous News Flies Fast

33 Joan's Five Great Deeds

34 The Jests of the Burgundians

35 The Heir of France is Crowned

36 Joan Hears News from Home

37 Again to Arms

38 The King Cries “Forward!”

39 We Win, But the King Balks

40 Treachery Conquers Joan

41 The Maid Will March No More


BOOK III TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM

1 The Maid in Chains

2 Joan Sold to the English

3 Weaving the Net About Her

4 All Ready to Condemn

5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice

6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors

7 Craft That Was in Vain

8 Joan Tells of Her Visions

9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold

10 The Inquisitors at Their Wits' End

11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination

12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted

13 The Third Trial Fails

14 Joan Struggles with Her Twelve Lies

15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning

16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack

17 Supreme in Direst Peril

18 Condemned Yet Unafraid

19 Our Last Hopes of Rescue Fail

20 The Betrayal

21 Respited Only for Torture

22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer

23 The Time Is at Hand

24 Joan the Martyr


CONCLUSION





BOOK II -- IN COURT AND CAMP (Continued)



28 Joan Foretells Her Doom

THE TROOPS must have a rest. Two days would be allowed for this. The
morning of the 14th I was writing from Joan's dictation in a small room
which she sometimes used as a private office when she wanted to get away
from officials and their interruptions. Catherine Boucher came in and
sat down and said:

“Joan, dear, I want you to talk to me.”

“Indeed, I am not sorry for that, but glad. What is in your mind?”

“This. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking of the dangers you are
running. The Paladin told me how you made the duke stand out of the way
when the cannon-balls were flying all about, and so saved his life.”

“Well, that was right, wasn't it?”

“Right? Yes; but you stayed there yourself. Why will you do like that?
It seems such a wanton risk.”

“Oh, no, it was not so. I was not in any danger.”

“How can you say that, Joan, with those deadly things flying all about
you?”

Joan laughed, and tried to turn the subject, but Catherine persisted.
She said:

“It was horribly dangerous, and it could not be necessary to stay
in such a place. And you led an assault again. Joan, it is tempting
Providence. I want you to make me a promise. I want you to promise me
that you will let others lead the assaults, if there must be assaults,
and that you will take better care of yourself in those dreadful
battles. Will you?”

But Joan fought away from the promise and did not give it. Catherine sat
troubled and discontented awhile, then she said:

“Joan, are you going to be a soldier always? These wars are so long--so
long. They last forever and ever and ever.”

There was a glad flash in Joan's eye as she cried:

“This campaign will do all the really hard work that is in front of
it in the next four days. The rest of it will be gentler--oh, far less
bloody. Yes, in four days France will gather another trophy like the
redemption of Orleans and make her second long step toward freedom!”

Catherine started (and so did I); then she gazed long at Joan like one
in a trance, murmuring “four days--four days,” as if to herself and
unconsciously. Finally she asked, in a low voice that had something of
awe in it:

“Joan, tell me--how is it that you know that? For you do know it, I
think.”

“Yes,” said Joan, dreamily, “I know--I know. I shall strike--and strike
again. And before the fourth day is finished I shall strike yet again.”
 She became silent. We sat wondering and still. This was for a whole
minute, she looking at the floor and her lips moving but uttering
nothing. Then came these words, but hardly audible: “And in a thousand
years the English power in France will not rise up from that blow.”

It made my flesh creep. It was uncanny. She was in a trance again--I
could see it--just as she was that day in the pastures of Domremy when
she prophesied about us boys in the war and afterward did not know that
she had done it. She was not conscious now; but Catherine did not know
that, and so she said, in a happy voice:

“Oh, I believe it, I believe it, and I am so glad! Then you will come
back and bide with us all your life long, and we will love you so, and
honor you!”

A scarcely perceptible spasm flitted across Joan's face, and the dreamy
voice muttered:

“Before two years are sped I shall die a cruel death!”

I sprang forward with a warning hand up. That is why Catherine did not
scream. She was going to do that--I saw it plainly. Then I whispered her
to slip out of the place, and say nothing of what had happened. I said
Joan was asleep--asleep and dreaming. Catherine whispered back, and
said:

“Oh, I am so grateful that it is only a dream! It sounded like
prophecy.” And she was gone.

Like prophecy! I knew it was prophecy; and I sat down crying, as knowing
we should lose her. Soon she started, shivering slightly, and came to
herself, and looked around and saw me crying there, and jumped out of
her chair and ran to me all in a whirl of sympathy and compassion, and
put her hand on my head, and said:

“My poor boy! What is it? Look up and tell me.”

I had to tell her a lie; I grieved to do it, but there was no other way.
I picked up an old letter from my table, written by Heaven knows who,
about some matter Heaven knows what, and told her I had just gotten it
from Pere Fronte, and that in it it said the children's Fairy Tree had
been chopped down by some miscreant or other, and-- I got no further.
She snatched the letter from my hand and searched it up and down and
all over, turning it this way and that, and sobbing great sobs, and the
tears flowing down her cheeks, and ejaculating all the time, “Oh, cruel,
cruel! how could any be so heartless? Ah, poor Arbre Fee de Bourlemont
gone--and we children loved it so! Show me the place where it says it!”

And I, still lying, showed her the pretended fatal words on the
pretended fatal page, and she gazed at them through her tears, and said
she could see herself that they were hateful, ugly words--they “had the
very look of it.”

Then we heard a strong voice down the corridor announcing:

“His majesty's messenger--with despatches for her Excellency the
Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of France!”





29 Fierce Talbot Reconsiders

I KNEW she had seen the wisdom of the Tree. But when? I could not know.
Doubtless before she had lately told the King to use her, for that she
had but one year left to work in. It had not occurred to me at the time,
but the conviction came upon me now that at that time she had already
seen the Tree. It had brought her a welcome message; that was plain,
otherwise she could not have been so joyous and light-hearted as she had
been these latter days. The death-warning had nothing dismal about it
for her; no, it was remission of exile, it was leave to come home.

Yes, she had seen the Tree. No one had taken the prophecy to heart which
she made to the King; and for a good reason, no doubt; no one wanted to
take it to heart; all wanted to banish it away and forget it. And all
had succeeded, and would go on to the end placid and comfortable. All
but me alone. I must carry my awful secret without any to help me. A
heavy load, a bitter burden; and would cost me a daily heartbreak. She
was to die; and so soon. I had never dreamed of that. How could I, and
she so strong and fresh and young, and every day earning a new right
to a peaceful and honored old age? For at that time I thought old age
valuable. I do not know why, but I thought so. All young people think
it, I believe, they being ignorant and full of superstitions. She
had seen the Tree. All that miserable night those ancient verses went
floating back and forth through my brain:


     And when, in exile wand'ring, we
     Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
     Oh, rise upon our sight!

But at dawn the bugles and the drums burst through the dreamy hush of
the morning, and it was turn out all! mount and ride. For there was red
work to be done.

We marched to Meung without halting. There we carried the bridge by
assault, and left a force to hold it, the rest of the army marching away
next morning toward Beaugency, where the lion Talbot, the terror of
the French, was in command. When we arrived at that place, the English
retired into the castle and we sat down in the abandoned town.

Talbot was not at the moment present in person, for he had gone away to
watch for and welcome Fastolfe and his reinforcement of five thousand
men.

Joan placed her batteries and bombarded the castle till night. Then some
news came: Richemont, Constable of France, this long time in disgrace
with the King, largely because of the evil machinations of La Tremouille
and his party, was approaching with a large body of men to offer his
services to Joan--and very much she needed them, now that Fastolfe
was so close by. Richemont had wanted to join us before, when we first
marched on Orleans; but the foolish King, slave of those paltry advisers
of his, warned him to keep his distance and refused all reconciliation
with him.

I go into these details because they are important. Important because
they lead up to the exhibition of a new gift in Joan's extraordinary
mental make-up--statesmanship. It is a sufficiently strange thing to
find that great quality in an ignorant country-girl of seventeen and a
half, but she had it.

Joan was for receiving Richemont cordially, and so was La Hire and
the two young Lavals and other chiefs, but the Lieutenant-General,
d'Alencon, strenuously and stubbornly opposed it. He said he had
absolute orders from the King to deny and defy Richemont, and that if
they were overridden he would leave the army. This would have been a
heavy disaster, indeed. But Joan set herself the task of persuading him
that the salvation of France took precedence of all minor things--even
the commands of a sceptered ass; and she accomplished it. She persuaded
him to disobey the King in the interest of the nation, and to be
reconciled to Count Richemont and welcome him. That was statesmanship;
and of the highest and soundest sort. Whatever thing men call great,
look for it in Joan of Arc, and there you will find it.

In the early morning, June 17th, the scouts reported the approach of
Talbot and Fastolfe with Fastolfe's succoring force. Then the drums beat
to arms; and we set forth to meet the English, leaving Richemont and his
troops behind to watch the castle of Beaugency and keep its garrison
at home. By and by we came in sight of the enemy. Fastolfe had tried to
convince Talbot that it would be wisest to retreat and not risk a battle
with Joan at this time, but distribute the new levies among the English
strongholds of the Loire, thus securing them against capture; then be
patient and wait--wait for more levies from Paris; let Joan exhaust her
army with fruitless daily skirmishing; then at the right time fall upon
her in resistless mass and annihilate her. He was a wise old experienced
general, was Fastolfe. But that fierce Talbot would hear of no delay. He
was in a rage over the punishment which the Maid had inflicted upon him
at Orleans and since, and he swore by God and Saint George that he
would have it out with her if he had to fight her all alone. So Fastolfe
yielded, though he said they were now risking the loss of everything
which the English had gained by so many years' work and so many hard
knocks.

The enemy had taken up a strong position, and were waiting, in order of
battle, with their archers to the front and a stockade before them.

Night was coming on. A messenger came from the English with a rude
defiance and an offer of battle. But Joan's dignity was not ruffled, her
bearing was not discomposed. She said to the herald:

“Go back and say it is too late to meet to-night; but to-morrow, please
God and our Lady, we will come to close quarters.”

The night fell dark and rainy. It was that sort of light steady rain
which falls so softly and brings to one's spirit such serenity and
peace. About ten o'clock D'Alencon, the Bastard of Orleans, La Hire,
Pothon of Saintrailles, and two or three other generals came to our
headquarters tent, and sat down to discuss matters with Joan. Some
thought it was a pity that Joan had declined battle, some thought not.
Then Pothon asked her why she had declined it. She said:

“There was more than one reason. These English are ours--they cannot
get away from us. Wherefore there is no need to take risks, as at other
times. The day was far spent. It is good to have much time and the fair
light of day when one's force is in a weakened state--nine hundred of
us yonder keeping the bridge of Meung under the Marshal de Rais, fifteen
hundred with the Constable of France keeping the bridge and watching the
castle of Beaugency.”

Dunois said:

“I grieve for this decision, Excellency, but it cannot be helped. And
the case will be the same the morrow, as to that.”

Joan was walking up and down just then. She laughed her affectionate,
comrady laugh, and stopping before that old war-tiger she put her small
hand above his head and touched one of his plumes, saying:

“Now tell me, wise man, which feather is it that I touch?”

“In sooth, Excellency, that I cannot.”

“Name of God, Bastard, Bastard! you cannot tell me this small thing, yet
are bold to name a large one--telling us what is in the stomach of the
unborn morrow: that we shall not have those men. Now it is my thought
that they will be with us.”

That made a stir. All wanted to know why she thought that. But La Hire
took the word and said:

“Let be. If she thinks it, that is enough. It will happen.”

Then Pothon of Santrailles said:

“There were other reasons for declining battle, according to the saying
of your Excellency?”

“Yes. One was that we being weak and the day far gone, the battle might
not be decisive. When it is fought it must be decisive. And it shall
be.”

“God grant it, and amen. There were still other reasons?”

“One other--yes.” She hesitated a moment, then said: “This was not the
day. To-morrow is the day. It is so written.”

They were going to assail her with eager questionings, but she put up
her hand and prevented them. Then she said:

“It will be the most noble and beneficent victory that God has
vouchsafed for France at any time. I pray you question me not as to
whence or how I know this thing, but be content that it is so.”

There was pleasure in every face, and conviction and high confidence.
A murmur of conversation broke out, but that was interrupted by a
messenger from the outposts who brought news--namely, that for an hour
there had been stir and movement in the English camp of a sort unusual
at such a time and with a resting army, he said. Spies had been sent
under cover of the rain and darkness to inquire into it. They had just
come back and reported that large bodies of men had been dimly made out
who were slipping stealthily away in the direction of Meung.

The generals were very much surprised, as any might tell from their
faces.

“It is a retreat,” said Joan.

“It has that look,” said D'Alencon.

“It certainly has,” observed the Bastard and La Hire.

“It was not to be expected,” said Louis de Bourbon, “but one can divine
the purpose of it.”

“Yes,” responded Joan. “Talbot has reflected. His rash brain has cooled.
He thinks to take the bridge of Meung and escape to the other side of
the river. He knows that this leaves his garrison of Beaugency at the
mercy of fortune, to escape our hands if it can; but there is no other
course if he would avoid this battle, and that he also knows. But he
shall not get the bridge. We will see to that.”

“Yes,” said D'Alencon, “we must follow him, and take care of that
matter. What of Beaugency?”

“Leave Beaugency to me, gentle duke; I will have it in two hours, and at
no cost of blood.”

“It is true, Excellency. You will but need to deliver this news there
and receive the surrender.”

“Yes. And I will be with you at Meung with the dawn, fetching the
Constable and his fifteen hundred; and when Talbot knows that Beaugency
has fallen it will have an effect upon him.”

“By the mass, yes!” cried La Hire. “He will join his Meung garrison to
his army and break for Paris. Then we shall have our bridge force with
us again, along with our Beaugency watchers, and be stronger for our
great day's work by four-and-twenty hundred able soldiers, as was here
promised within the hour. Verily this Englishman is doing our errands
for us and saving us much blood and trouble. Orders, Excellency--give us
orders!”

“They are simple. Let the men rest three hours longer. At one o'clock
the advance-guard will march, under our command, with Pothon of
Saintrailles as second; the second division will follow at two under the
Lieutenant-General. Keep well in the rear of the enemy, and see to it
that you avoid an engagement. I will ride under guard to Beaugency and
make so quick work there that I and the Constable of France will join
you before dawn with his men.”

She kept her word. Her guard mounted and we rode off through the
puttering rain, taking with us a captured English officer to confirm
Joan's news. We soon covered the journey and summoned the castle.
Richard Guetin, Talbot's lieutenant, being convinced that he and his
five hundred men were left helpless, conceded that it would be useless
to try to hold out. He could not expect easy terms, yet Joan granted
them nevertheless. His garrison could keep their horses and arms, and
carry away property to the value of a silver mark per man. They could go
whither they pleased, but must not take arms against France again under
ten days.

Before dawn we were with our army again, and with us the Constable
and nearly all his men, for we left only a small garrison in Beaugency
castle. We heard the dull booming of cannon to the front, and knew that
Talbot was beginning his attack on the bridge. But some time before it
was yet light the sound ceased and we heard it no more.

Guetin had sent a messenger through our lines under a safe-conduct given
by Joan, to tell Talbot of the surrender. Of course this poursuivant had
arrived ahead of us. Talbot had held it wisdom to turn now and retreat
upon Paris. When daylight came he had disappeared; and with him Lord
Scales and the garrison of Meung.

What a harvest of English strongholds we had reaped in those three
days!--strongholds which had defied France with quite cool confidence
and plenty of it until we came.





30 The Red Field of Patay

WHEN THE morning broke at last on that forever memorable 18th of June,
there was no enemy discoverable anywhere, as I have said. But that did
not trouble me. I knew we should find him, and that we should strike
him; strike him the promised blow--the one from which the English power
in France would not rise up in a thousand years, as Joan had said in her
trance.

The enemy had plunged into the wide plains of La Beauce--a roadless
waste covered with bushes, with here and there bodies of forest trees--a
region where an army would be hidden from view in a very little while.
We found the trail in the soft wet earth and followed it. It indicated
an orderly march; no confusion, no panic.

But we had to be cautious. In such a piece of country we could walk into
an ambush without any trouble. Therefore Joan sent bodies of cavalry
ahead under La Hire, Pothon, and other captains, to feel the way.
Some of the other officers began to show uneasiness; this sort of
hide-and-go-seek business troubled them and made their confidence
a little shaky. Joan divined their state of mind and cried out
impetuously:

“Name of God, what would you? We must smite these English, and we will.
They shall not escape us. Though they were hung to the clouds we would
get them!”

By and by we were nearing Patay; it was about a league away. Now at this
time our reconnaissance, feeling its way in the bush, frightened a deer,
and it went bounding away and was out of sight in a moment. Then hardly
a minute later a dull great shout went up in the distance toward Patay.
It was the English soldiery. They had been shut up in a garrison so long
on moldy food that they could not keep their delight to themselves when
this fine fresh meat came springing into their midst. Poor creature, it
had wrought damage to a nation which loved it well. For the French knew
where the English were now, whereas the English had no suspicion of
where the French were.

La Hire halted where he was, and sent back the tidings. Joan was radiant
with joy. The Duke d'Alencon said to her:

“Very well, we have found them; shall we fight them?”

“Have you good spurs, prince?”

“Why? Will they make us run away?”

“Nenni, en nom de Dieu! These English are ours--they are lost. They will
fly. Who overtakes them will need good spurs. Forward--close up!”

By the time we had come up with La Hire the English had discovered
our presence. Talbot's force was marching in three bodies. First his
advance-guard; then his artillery; then his battle-corps a good way in
the rear. He was now out of the bush and in a fair open country. He at
once posted his artillery, his advance-guard, and five hundred picked
archers along some hedges where the French would be obliged to pass,
and hoped to hold this position till his battle-corps could come up.
Sir John Fastolfe urged the battle-corps into a gallop. Joan saw her
opportunity and ordered La Hire to advance--which La Hire promptly did,
launching his wild riders like a storm-wind, his customary fashion.

The duke and the Bastard wanted to follow, but Joan said:

“Not yet--wait.”

So they waited--impatiently, and fidgeting in their saddles. But she was
ready--gazing straight before her, measuring, weighing, calculating--by
shades, minutes, fractions of minutes, seconds--with all her great soul
present, in eye, and set of head, and noble pose of body--but patient,
steady, master of herself--master of herself and of the situation.

And yonder, receding, receding, plumes lifting and falling, lifting and
falling, streamed the thundering charge of La Hire's godless crew, La
Hire's great figure dominating it and his sword stretched aloft like a
flagstaff.

“Oh, Satan and his Hellions, see them go!” Somebody muttered it in deep
admiration.

And now he was closing up--closing up on Fastolfe's rushing corps.

And now he struck it--struck it hard, and broke its order. It lifted
the duke and the Bastard in their saddles to see it; and they turned,
trembling with excitement, to Joan, saying:

“Now!”

But she put up her hand, still gazing, weighing, calculating, and said
again:

“Wait--not yet.”

Fastolfe's hard-driven battle-corps raged on like an avalanche toward
the waiting advance-guard. Suddenly these conceived the idea that it was
flying in panic before Joan; and so in that instant it broke and swarmed
away in a mad panic itself, with Talbot storming and cursing after it.

Now was the golden time. Joan drove her spurs home and waved the advance
with her sword. “Follow me!” she cried, and bent her head to her horse's
neck and sped away like the wind!

We went down into the confusion of that flying rout, and for three long
hours we cut and hacked and stabbed. At last the bugles sang “Halt!”

The Battle of Patay was won.

Joan of Arc dismounted, and stood surveying that awful field, lost in
thought. Presently she said:

“The praise is to God. He has smitten with a heavy hand this day.”
 After a little she lifted her face, and looking afar off, said, with the
manner of one who is thinking aloud, “In a thousand years--a thousand
years--the English power in France will not rise up from this blow.”
 She stood again a time thinking, then she turned toward her grouped
generals, and there was a glory in her face and a noble light in her
eye; and she said:

“Oh, friends, friends, do you know?--do you comprehend? France is on the
way to be free!”

“And had never been, but for Joan of Arc!” said La Hire, passing before
her and bowing low, the other following and doing likewise; he muttering
as he went, “I will say it though I be damned for it.” Then battalion
after battalion of our victorious army swung by, wildly cheering. And
they shouted, “Live forever, Maid of Orleans, live forever!” while Joan,
smiling, stood at the salute with her sword.

This was not the last time I saw the Maid of Orleans on the red field
of Patay. Toward the end of the day I came upon her where the dead and
dying lay stretched all about in heaps and winrows; our men had mortally
wounded an English prisoner who was too poor to pay a ransom, and from
a distance she had seen that cruel thing done; and had galloped to the
place and sent for a priest, and now she was holding the head of her
dying enemy in her lap, and easing him to his death with comforting soft
words, just as his sister might have done; and the womanly tears running
down her face all the time. (1)

(1) Lord Ronald Gower (Joan of Arc, p. 82) says: “Michelet discovered
this story in the deposition of Joan of Arc's page, Louis de Conte, who
was probably an eye-witness of the scene.” This is true. It was a part
of the testimony of the author of these “Personal Recollections of
Joan of Arc,” given by him in the Rehabilitation proceedings of 1456.
--TRANSLATOR.





31 France Begins to Live Again

 JOAN HAD said true: France was on the way to be free.

The war called the Hundred Years' War was very sick to-day. Sick on its
English side--for the very first time since its birth, ninety-one years
gone by.

Shall we judge battles by the numbers killed and the ruin wrought? Or
shall we not rather judge them by the results which flowed from them?
Any one will say that a battle is only truly great or small according to
its results. Yes, any one will grant that, for it is the truth.

Judged by results, Patay's place is with the few supremely great and
imposing battles that have been fought since the peoples of the world
first resorted to arms for the settlement of their quarrels. So
judged, it is even possible that Patay has no peer among that few just
mentioned, but stand alone, as the supremest of historic conflicts. For
when it began France lay gasping out the remnant of an exhausted life,
her case wholly hopeless in the view of all political physicians; when
it ended, three hours later, she was convalescent. Convalescent, and
nothing requisite but time and ordinary nursing to bring her back to
perfect health. The dullest physician of them all could see this, and
there was none to deny it.

Many death-sick nations have reached convalescence through a series
of battles, a procession of battles, a weary tale of wasting conflicts
stretching over years, but only one has reached it in a single day and
by a single battle. That nation is France, and that battle Patay.

Remember it and be proud of it; for you are French, and it is the
stateliest fact in the long annals of your country. There it stands,
with its head in the clouds! And when you grow up you will go on
pilgrimage to the field of Patay, and stand uncovered in the presence
of--what? A monument with its head in the clouds? Yes. For all nations
in all times have built monuments on their battle-fields to keep green
the memory of the perishable deed that was wrought there and of the
perishable name of him who wrought it; and will France neglect Patay and
Joan of Arc? Not for long. And will she build a monument scaled to their
rank as compared with the world's other fields and heroes? Perhaps--if
there be room for it under the arch of the sky.

But let us look back a little, and consider certain strange and
impressive facts. The Hundred Years' War began in 1337. It raged on and
on, year after year and year after year; and at last England stretched
France prone with that fearful blow at Crecy. But she rose and struggled
on, year after year, and at last again she went down under another
devastating blow--Poitiers. She gathered her crippled strength once
more, and the war raged on, and on, and still on, year after year,
decade after decade. Children were born, grew up, married, died--the war
raged on; their children in turn grew up, married, died--the war raged
on; their children, growing, saw France struck down again; this time
under the incredible disaster of Agincourt--and still the war raged on,
year after year, and in time these children married in their turn.

France was a wreck, a ruin, a desolation. The half of it belonged to
England, with none to dispute or deny the truth; the other half belonged
to nobody--in three months would be flying the English flag; the French
King was making ready to throw away his crown and flee beyond the seas.

Now came the ignorant country-maid out of her remote village and
confronted this hoary war, this all-consuming conflagration that had
swept the land for three generations. Then began the briefest and most
amazing campaign that is recorded in history. In seven weeks it was
finished. In seven weeks she hopelessly crippled that gigantic war that
was ninety-one years old. At Orleans she struck it a staggering blow; on
the field of Patay she broke its back.

Think of it. Yes, one can do that; but understand it? Ah, that is
another matter; none will ever be able to comprehend that stupefying
marvel.

Seven weeks--with her and there a little bloodshed. Perhaps the most of
it, in any single fight, at Patay, where the English began six thousand
strong and left two thousand dead upon the field. It is said
and believed that in three battles alone--Crecy, Poitiers, and
Agincourt--near a hundred thousand Frenchmen fell, without counting
the thousand other fights of that long war. The dead of that war make a
mournful long list--an interminable list. Of men slain in the field the
count goes by tens of thousands; of innocent women and children slain by
bitter hardship and hunger it goes by that appalling term, millions.

It was an ogre, that war; an ogre that went about for near a hundred
years, crunching men and dripping blood from its jaws. And with her
little hand that child of seventeen struck him down; and yonder he lies
stretched on the field of Patay, and will not get up any more while this
old world lasts.





32 The Joyous News Flies Fast

THE GREAT news of Patay was carried over the whole of France in twenty
hours, people said. I do not know as to that; but one thing is sure,
anyway: the moment a man got it he flew shouting and glorifying God and
told his neighbor; and that neighbor flew with it to the next homestead;
and so on and so on without resting the word traveled; and when a man
got it in the night, at what hour soever, he jumped out of his bed and
bore the blessed message along. And the joy that went with it was like
the light that flows across the land when an eclipse is receding from
the face of the sun; and, indeed, you may say that France had lain in
an eclipse this long time; yes, buried in a black gloom which these
beneficent tidings were sweeping away now before the onrush of their
white splendor.

The news beat the flying enemy to Yeuville, and the town rose against
its English masters and shut the gates against their brethren. It flew
to Mont Pipeau, to Saint Simon, and to this, that, and the other English
fortress; and straightway the garrison applied the torch and took to
the fields and the woods. A detachment of our army occupied Meung and
pillaged it.

When we reached Orleans that tow was as much as fifty times insaner with
joy than we had ever seen it before--which is saying much. Night had
just fallen, and the illuminations were on so wonderful a scale that
we seemed to plow through seas of fire; and as to the noise--the hoarse
cheering of the multitude, the thundering of cannon, the clash of
bells--indeed, there was never anything like it. And everywhere rose
a new cry that burst upon us like a storm when the column entered the
gates, and nevermore ceased: “Welcome to Joan of Arc--way for the SAVIOR
OF FRANCE!” And there was another cry: “Crecy is avenged! Poitiers is
avenged! Agincourt is avenged!--Patay shall live forever!”

Mad? Why, you never could imagine it in the world. The prisoners were
in the center of the column. When that came along and the people caught
sight of their masterful old enemy Talbot, that had made them dance so
long to his grim war-music, you may imagine what the uproar was like if
you can, for I can not describe it. They were so glad to see him that
presently they wanted to have him out and hang him; so Joan had him
brought up to the front to ride in her protection. They made a striking
pair.





33 Joan's Five Great Deeds

YES, ORLEANS was in a delirium of felicity. She invited the King, and
made sumptuous preparations to receive him, but--he didn't come. He was
simply a serf at that time, and La Tremouille was his master. Master and
serf were visiting together at the master's castle of Sully-sur-Loire.

At Beaugency Joan had engaged to bring about a reconciliation
between the Constable Richemont and the King. She took Richemont to
Sully-sur-Loire and made her promise good.

The great deeds of Joan of Arc are five:

1. The Raising of the Siege.

2. The Victory of Patay.

3. The Reconciliation at Sully-sur-Loire.

4. The Coronation of the King.

5. The Bloodless March.

We shall come to the Bloodless March presently (and the Coronation).
It was the victorious long march which Joan made through the enemy's
country from Gien to Rheims, and thence to the gates of Paris, capturing
every English town and fortress that barred the road, from the beginning
of the journey to the end of it; and this by the mere force of her name,
and without shedding a drop of blood--perhaps the most extraordinary
campaign in this regard in history--this is the most glorious of her
military exploits.

The Reconciliation was one of Joan's most important achievements. No
one else could have accomplished it; and, in fact, no one else of
high consequence had any disposition to try. In brains, in scientific
warfare, and in statesmanship the Constable Richemont was the ablest
man in France. His loyalty was sincere; his probity was above
suspicion--(and it made him sufficiently conspicuous in that trivial and
conscienceless Court).

In restoring Richemont to France, Joan made thoroughly secure the
successful completion of the great work which she had begun. She had
never seen Richemont until he came to her with his little army. Was it
not wonderful that at a glance she should know him for the one man who
could finish and perfect her work and establish it in perpetuity? How
was it that that child was able to do this? It was because she had the
“seeing eye,” as one of our knights had once said. Yes, she had that
great gift--almost the highest and rarest that has been granted to man.
Nothing of an extraordinary sort was still to be done, yet the remaining
work could not safely be left to the King's idiots; for it would require
wise statesmanship and long and patient though desultory hammering of
the enemy. Now and then, for a quarter of a century yet, there would be
a little fighting to do, and a handy man could carry that on with small
disturbance to the rest of the country; and little by little, and with
progressive certainty, the English would disappear from France.

And that happened. Under the influence of Richemont the King became at
a later time a man--a man, a king, a brave and capable and determined
soldier. Within six years after Patay he was leading storming parties
himself; fighting in fortress ditches up to his waist in water, and
climbing scaling-ladders under a furious fire with a pluck that would
have satisfied even Joan of Arc. In time he and Richemont cleared away
all the English; even from regions where the people had been under their
mastership for three hundred years. In such regions wise and careful
work was necessary, for the English rule had been fair and kindly; and
men who have been ruled in that way are not always anxious for a change.

Which of Joan's five chief deeds shall we call the chiefest? It is my
thought that each in its turn was that. This is saying that, taken as a
whole, they equalized each other, and neither was then greater than its
mate.

Do you perceive? Each was a stage in an ascent. To leave out one of them
would defeat the journey; to achieve one of them at the wrong time and
in the wrong place would have the same effect.

Consider the Coronation. As a masterpiece of diplomacy, where can
you find its superior in our history? Did the King suspect its
vast importance? No. Did his ministers? No. Did the astute Bedford,
representative of the English crown? No. An advantage of incalculable
importance was here under the eyes of the King and of Bedford; the King
could get it by a bold stroke, Bedford could get it without an effort;
but, being ignorant of its value, neither of them put forth his hand.
Of all the wise people in high office in France, only one knew
the priceless worth of this neglected prize--the untaught child of
seventeen, Joan of Arc--and she had known it from the beginning as an
essential detail of her mission.

How did she know it? It was simple: she was a peasant. That tells the
whole story. She was of the people and knew the people; those others
moved in a loftier sphere and knew nothing much about them. We make
little account of that vague, formless, inert mass, that mighty
underlying force which we call “the people”--an epithet which carries
contempt with it. It is a strange attitude; for at bottom we know that
the throne which the people support stands, and that when that support
is removed nothing in this world can save it.

Now, then, consider this fact, and observe its importance. Whatever the
parish priest believes his flock believes; they love him, they revere
him; he is their unfailing friend, their dauntless protector, their
comforter in sorrow, their helper in their day of need; he has their
whole confidence; what he tells them to do, that they will do, with a
blind and affectionate obedience, let it cost what it may. Add these
facts thoughtfully together, and what is the sum? This: The parish
priest governs the nation. What is the King, then, if the parish priest
withdraws his support and deny his authority? Merely a shadow and no
King; let him resign.

Do you get that idea? Then let us proceed. A priest is consecrated to
his office by the awful hand of God, laid upon him by his appointed
representative on earth. That consecration is final; nothing can undo
it, nothing can remove it. Neither the Pope nor any other power can
strip the priest of his office; God gave it, and it is forever sacred
and secure. The dull parish knows all this. To priest and parish,
whatsoever is anointed of God bears an office whose authority can
no longer be disputed or assailed. To the parish priest, and to his
subjects the nation, an uncrowned king is a similitude of a person who
has been named for holy orders but has not been consecrated; he has no
office, he has not been ordained, another may be appointed to his place.
In a word, an uncrowned king is a doubtful king; but if God appoint him
and His servant the Bishop anoint him, the doubt is annihilated; the
priest and the parish are his loyal subjects straightway, and while he
lives they will recognize no king but him.

To Joan of Arc, the peasant-girl, Charles VII. was no King until he was
crowned; to her he was only the Dauphin; that is to say, the heir. If I
have ever made her call him King, it was a mistake; she called him the
Dauphin, and nothing else until after the Coronation. It shows you as in
a mirror--for Joan was a mirror in which the lowly hosts of France were
clearly reflected--that to all that vast underlying force called “the
people,” he was no King but only Dauphin before his crowning, and was
indisputably and irrevocably King after it.

Now you understand what a colossal move on the political chess-board the
Coronation was. Bedford realized this by and by, and tried to patch up
his mistake by crowning his King; but what good could that do? None in
the world.

Speaking of chess, Joan's great acts may be likened to that game. Each
move was made in its proper order, and it as great and effective because
it was made in its proper order and not out of it. Each, at the time
made, seemed the greatest move; but the final result made them all
recognizable as equally essential and equally important. This is the
game, as played:

1. Joan moves to Orleans and Patay--check.

2. Then moves the Reconciliation--but does not proclaim check, it being
a move for position, and to take effect later.

3. Next she moves the Coronation--check.

4. Next, the Bloodless March--check.

5. Final move (after her death), the reconciled Constable Richemont to
the French King's elbow--checkmate.





34 The Jests of the Burgundians

THE CAMPAIGN of the Loire had as good as opened the road to Rheims.
There was no sufficient reason now why the Coronation should not take
place. The Coronation would complete the mission which Joan had received
from heaven, and then she would be forever done with war, and would fly
home to her mother and her sheep, and never stir from the hearthstone
and happiness any more. That was her dream; and she could not rest, she
was so impatient to see it fulfilled. She became so possessed with this
matter that I began to lose faith in her two prophecies of her early
death--and, of course, when I found that faith wavering I encouraged it
to waver all the more.

The King was afraid to start to Rheims, because the road was mile-posted
with English fortresses, so to speak. Joan held them in light esteem and
not things to be afraid of in the existing modified condition of English
confidence.

And she was right. As it turned out, the march to Rheims was nothing but
a holiday excursion: Joan did not even take any artillery along, she was
so sure it would not be necessary. We marched from Gien twelve thousand
strong. This was the 29th of June. The Maid rode by the side of the
King; on his other side was the Duke d'Alencon. After the duke followed
three other princes of the blood. After these followed the Bastard of
Orleans, the Marshal de Boussac, and the Admiral of France. After these
came La Hire, Saintrailles, Tremouille, and a long procession of knights
and nobles.

We rested three days before Auxerre. The city provisioned the army, and
a deputation waited upon the King, but we did not enter the place.

Saint-Florentin opened its gates to the King.

On the 4th of July we reached Saint-Fal, and yonder lay Troyes before
us--a town which had a burning interest for us boys; for we remembered
how seven years before, in the pastures of Domremy, the Sunflower came
with his black flag and brought us the shameful news of the Treaty of
Troyes--that treaty which gave France to England, and a daughter of our
royal line in marriage to the Butcher of Agincourt. That poor town was
not to blame, of course; yet we flushed hot with that old memory, and
hoped there would be a misunderstanding here, for we dearly wanted to
storm the place and burn it. It was powerfully garrisoned by English and
Burgundian soldiery, and was expecting reinforcements from Paris. Before
night we camped before its gates and made rough work with a sortie which
marched out against us.

Joan summoned Troyes to surrender. Its commandant, seeing that she had
no artillery, scoffed at the idea, and sent her a grossly insulting
reply. Five days we consulted and negotiated. No result. The King was
about to turn back now and give up. He was afraid to go on, leaving this
strong place in his rear. Then La Hire put in a word, with a slap in it
for some of his Majesty's advisers:

“The Maid of Orleans undertook this expedition of her own motion; and it
is my mind that it is her judgment that should be followed here, and not
that of any other, let him be of whatsoever breed and standing he may.”

There was wisdom and righteousness in that. So the King sent for the
Maid, and asked her how she thought the prospect looked. She said,
without any tone of doubt or question in her voice:

“In three days' time the place is ours.”

The smug Chancellor put in a word now:

“If we were sure of it we would wait her six days.”

“Six days, forsooth! Name of God, man, we will enter the gates
to-morrow!”

Then she mounted, and rode her lines, crying out:

“Make preparation--to your work, friends, to your work! We assault at
dawn!”

She worked hard that night, slaving away with her own hands like a
common soldier. She ordered fascines and fagots to be prepared and
thrown into the fosse, thereby to bridge it; and in this rough labor she
took a man's share.

At dawn she took her place at the head of the storming force and the
bugles blew the assault. At that moment a flag of truce was flung to the
breeze from the walls, and Troyes surrendered without firing a shot.

The next day the King with Joan at his side and the Paladin bearing her
banner entered the town in state at the head of the army. And a goodly
army it was now, for it had been growing ever bigger and bigger from the
first.

And now a curious thing happened. By the terms of the treaty made with
the town the garrison of English and Burgundian soldiery were to be
allowed to carry away their “goods” with them. This was well, for
otherwise how would they buy the wherewithal to live? Very well; these
people were all to go out by the one gate, and at the time set for them
to depart we young fellows went to that gate, along with the Dwarf, to
see the march-out. Presently here they came in an interminable file, the
foot-soldiers in the lead. As they approached one could see that each
bore a burden of a bulk and weight to sorely tax his strength; and we
said among ourselves, truly these folk are well off for poor common
soldiers. When they were come nearer, what do you think? Every rascal
of them had a French prisoner on his back! They were carrying away their
“goods,” you see--their property--strictly according to the permission
granted by the treaty.

Now think how clever that was, how ingenious. What could a body say?
what could a body do? For certainly these people were within their
right. These prisoners were property; nobody could deny that. My dears,
if those had been English captives, conceive of the richness of that
booty! For English prisoners had been scarce and precious for a hundred
years; whereas it was a different matter with French prisoners. They had
been over-abundant for a century. The possessor of a French prisoner
did not hold him long for ransom, as a rule, but presently killed him
to save the cost of his keep. This shows you how small was the value of
such a possession in those times. When we took Troyes a calf was worth
thirty francs, a sheep sixteen, a French prisoner eight. It was an
enormous price for those other animals--a price which naturally seems
incredible to you. It was the war, you see. It worked two ways: it made
meat dear and prisoners cheap.

Well, here were these poor Frenchmen being carried off. What could we
do? Very little of a permanent sort, but we did what we could. We sent
a messenger flying to Joan, and we and the French guards halted the
procession for a parley--to gain time, you see. A big Burgundian lost
his temper and swore a great oath that none should stop him; he would
go, and would take his prisoner with him. But we blocked him off, and
he saw that he was mistaken about going--he couldn't do it. He exploded
into the maddest cursings and revilings, then, and, unlashing his
prisoner from his back, stood him up, all bound and helpless; then drew
his knife, and said to us with a light of sarcasting triumph in his eye:

“I may not carry him away, you say--yet he is mine, none will dispute
it. Since I may not convey him hence, this property of mine, there is
another way. Yes, I can kill him; not even the dullest among you will
question that right. Ah, you had not thought of that--vermin!”

That poor starved fellow begged us with his piteous eyes to save him;
then spoke, and said he had a wife and little children at home. Think
how it wrung our heartstrings. But what could we do? The Burgundian was
within his right. We could only beg and plead for the prisoner. Which we
did. And the Burgundian enjoyed it. He stayed his hand to hear more of
it, and laugh at it. That stung. Then the Dwarf said:

“Prithee, young sirs, let me beguile him; for when a matter requiring
permission is to the fore, I have indeed a gift in that sort, as any
will tell you that know me well. You smile; and that is punishment for
my vanity; and fairly earned, I grant you. Still, if I may toy a little,
just a little--” saying which he stepped to the Burgundian and began a
fair soft speech, all of goodly and gentle tenor; and in the midst he
mentioned the Maid; and was going on to say how she out of her good
heart would prize and praise this compassionate deed which he was about
to-- It was as far as he got. The Burgundian burst into his smooth
oration with an insult leveled at Joan of Arc. We sprang forward, but
the Dwarf, his face all livid, brushed us aside and said, in a most
grave and earnest way:

“I crave your patience. Am not I her guard of honor? This is my affair.”

And saying this he suddenly shot his right hand out and gripped the
great Burgundian by the throat, and so held him upright on his feet.
“You have insulted the Maid,” he said; “and the Maid is France. The
tongue that does that earns a long furlough.”

One heard the muffled cracking of bones. The Burgundian's eyes began to
protrude from their sockets and stare with a leaden dullness at vacancy.
The color deepened in his face and became an opaque purple. His hands
hung down limp, his body collapsed with a shiver, every muscle relaxed
its tension and ceased from its function. The Dwarf took away his hand
and the column of inert mortality sank mushily to the ground.

We struck the bonds from the prisoner and told him he was free. His
crawling humbleness changed to frantic joy in a moment, and his ghastly
fear to a childish rage. He flew at that dead corpse and kicked it,
spat in its face, danced upon it, crammed mud into its mouth, laughing,
jeering, cursing, and volleying forth indecencies and bestialities like
a drunken fiend. It was a thing to be expected; soldiering makes few
saints. Many of the onlookers laughed, others were indifferent, none
was surprised. But presently in his mad caperings the freed man capered
within reach of the waiting file, and another Burgundian promptly
slipped a knife through his neck, and down he went with a death-shriek,
his brilliant artery blood spurting ten feet as straight and bright as a
ray of light. There was a great burst of jolly laughter all around from
friend and foe alike; and thus closed one of the pleasantest incidents
of my checkered military life.

And now came Joan hurrying, and deeply troubled. She considered the
claim of the garrison, then said:

“You have right upon your side. It is plain. It was a careless word to
put in the treaty, and covers too much. But ye may not take these poor
men away. They are French, and I will not have it. The King shall ransom
them, every one. Wait till I send you word from him; and hurt no hair of
their heads; for I tell you, I who speak, that that would cost you very
dear.”

That settled it. The prisoners were safe for one while, anyway. Then she
rode back eagerly and required that thing of the King, and would listen
to no paltering and no excuses. So the King told her to have her way,
and she rode straight back and bought the captives free in his name and
let them go.





35 The Heir of France is Crowned

IT WAS here hat we saw again the Grand Master of the King's Household,
in whose castle Joan was guest when she tarried at Chinon in those
first days of her coming out of her own country. She made him Bailiff of
Troyes now by the King's permission.

And now we marched again; Chalons surrendered to us; and there by
Chalons in a talk, Joan, being asked if she had no fears for the future,
said yes, one--treachery. Who would believe it? who could dream it? And
yet in a sense it was prophecy. Truly, man is a pitiful animal.

We marched, marched, kept on marching; and at last, on the 16th of July,
we came in sight of our goal, and saw the great cathedraled towers of
Rheims rise out of the distance! Huzza after huzza swept the army from
van to rear; and as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse
gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face
a deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was not flesh, she was a
spirit! Her sublime mission was closing--closing in flawless triumph.
To-morrow she could say, “It is finished--let me go free.”

We camped, and the hurry and rush and turmoil of the grand preparations
began. The Archbishop and a great deputation arrived; and after these
came flock after flock, crowd after crowd, of citizens and country-folk,
hurrahing, in, with banners and music, and flowed over the camp, one
rejoicing inundation after another, everybody drunk with happiness. And
all night long Rheims was hard at work, hammering away, decorating
the town, building triumphal arches and clothing the ancient cathedral
within and without in a glory of opulent splendors.

We moved betimes in the morning; the coronation ceremonies would begin
at nine and last five hours. We were aware that the garrison of English
and Burgundian soldiers had given up all thought of resisting the Maid,
and that we should find the gates standing hospitably open and the whole
city ready to welcome us with enthusiasm.

It was a delicious morning, brilliant with sunshine, but cool and
fresh and inspiring. The army was in great form, and fine to see, as
it uncoiled from its lair fold by fold, and stretched away on the final
march of the peaceful Coronation Campaign.

Joan, on her black horse, with the Lieutenant-General and the personal
staff grouped about her, took post for a final review and a good-by;
for she was not expecting to ever be a soldier again, or ever serve with
these or any other soldiers any more after this day. The army knew this,
and believed it was looking for the last time upon the girlish face of
its invincible little Chief, its pet, its pride, its darling, whom it
had ennobled in its private heart with nobilities of its own creation,
call her “Daughter of God,” “Savior of France,” “Victory's Sweetheart,”
 “The Page of Christ,” together with still softer titles which were
simply naive and frank endearments such as men are used to confer upon
children whom they love. And so one saw a new thing now; a thing bred of
the emotion that was present there on both sides. Always before, in the
march-past, the battalions had gone swinging by in a storm of cheers,
heads up and eyes flashing, the drums rolling, the bands braying paens
of victory; but now there was nothing of that. But for one impressive
sound, one could have closed his eyes and imagined himself in a world
of the dead. That one sound was all that visited the ear in the summer
stillness--just that one sound--the muffled tread of the marching host.
As the serried masses drifted by, the men put their right hands up to
their temples, palms to the front, in military salute, turning their
eyes upon Joan's face in mute God-bless-you and farewell, and keeping
them there while they could. They still kept their hands up in reverent
salute many steps after they had passed by. Every time Joan put her
handkerchief to her eyes you could see a little quiver of emotion
crinkle along the faces of the files.

The march-past after a victory is a thing to drive the heart mad with
jubilation; but this one was a thing to break it.

We rode now to the King's lodgings, which was the Archbishop's country
palace; and he was presently ready, and we galloped off and took
position at the head of the army. By this time the country-people were
arriving in multitudes from every direction and massing themselves on
both sides of the road to get sight of Joan--just as had been done every
day since our first day's march began. Our march now lay through the
grassy plain, and those peasants made a dividing double border for that
plain. They stretched right down through it, a broad belt of bright
colors on each side of the road; for every peasant girl and woman in it
had a white jacket on her body and a crimson skirt on the rest of her.
Endless borders made of poppies and lilies stretching away in front of
us--that is what it looked like. And that is the kind of lane we had
been marching through all these days. Not a lane between multitudinous
flowers standing upright on their stems--no, these flowers were always
kneeling; kneeling, these human flowers, with their hands and faces
lifted toward Joan of Arc, and the grateful tears streaming down. And
all along, those closest to the road hugged her feet and kissed them
and laid their wet cheeks fondly against them. I never, during all those
days, saw any of either sex stand while she passed, nor any man keep his
head covered. Afterward in the Great Trial these touching scenes were
used as a weapon against her. She had been made an object of adoration
by the people, and this was proof that she was a heretic--so claimed
that unjust court.

As we drew near the city the curving long sweep of ramparts and towers
was gay with fluttering flags and black with masses of people; and
all the air was vibrant with the crash of artillery and gloomed with
drifting clouds of smoke. We entered the gates in state and moved in
procession through the city, with all the guilds and industries in
holiday costume marching in our rear with their banners; and all the
route was hedged with a huzzaing crush of people, and all the windows
were full and all the roofs; and from the balconies hung costly stuffs
of rich colors; and the waving of handkerchiefs, seen in perspective
through a long vista, was like a snowstorm.

Joan's name had been introduced into the prayers of the Church--an honor
theretofore restricted to royalty. But she had a dearer honor and an
honor more to be proud of, from a humbler source: the common people had
had leaden medals struck which bore her effigy and her escutcheon, and
these they wore as charms. One saw them everywhere.

From the Archbishop's Palace, where we halted, and where the King and
Joan were to lodge, the King sent to the Abbey Church of St. Remi,
which was over toward the gate by which we had entered the city, for the
Sainte Ampoule, or flask of holy oil. This oil was not earthly oil; it
was made in heaven; the flask also. The flask, with the oil in it, was
brought down from heaven by a dove. It was sent down to St. Remi just as
he was going to baptize King Clovis, who had become a Christian. I know
this to be true. I had known it long before; for Pere Fronte told me in
Domremy. I cannot tell you how strange and awful it made me feel when
I saw that flask and knew I was looking with my own eyes upon a thing
which had actually been in heaven, a thing which had been seen by
angels, perhaps; and by God Himself of a certainty, for He sent it. And
I was looking upon it--I. At one time I could have touched it. But I
was afraid; for I could not know but that God had touched it. It is most
probable that He had.

From this flask Clovis had been anointed; and from it all the kings of
France had been anointed since. Yes, ever since the time of Clovis, and
that was nine hundred years. And so, as I have said, that flask of holy
oil was sent for, while we waited. A coronation without that would not
have been a coronation at all, in my belief.

Now in order to get the flask, a most ancient ceremonial had to be gone
through with; otherwise the Abby of St. Remi hereditary guardian in
perpetuity of the oil, would not deliver it. So, in accordance with
custom, the King deputed five great nobles to ride in solemn state and
richly armed and accoutered, they and their steeds, to the Abbey Church
as a guard of honor to the Archbishop of Rheims and his canons, who were
to bear the King's demand for the oil. When the five great lords were
ready to start, they knelt in a row and put up their mailed hands before
their faces, palm joined to palm, and swore upon their lives to conduct
the sacred vessel safely, and safely restore it again to the Church
of St. Remi after the anointing of the King. The Archbishop and his
subordinates, thus nobly escorted, took their way to St. Remi. The
Archbishop was in grand costume, with his miter on his head and his
cross in his hand. At the door of St. Remi they halted and formed, to
receive the holy vial. Soon one heard the deep tones of the organ and of
chanting men; then one saw a long file of lights approaching through the
dim church. And so came the Abbot, in his sacerdotal panoply, bearing
the vial, with his people following after. He delivered it, with solemn
ceremonies, to the Archbishop; then the march back began, and it was
most impressive; for it moved, the whole way, between two multitudes of
men and women who lay flat upon their faces and prayed in dumb silence
and in dread while that awful thing went by that had been in heaven.

This August company arrived at the great west door of the cathedral;
and as the Archbishop entered a noble anthem rose and filled the vast
building. The cathedral was packed with people--people in thousands.
Only a wide space down the center had been kept free. Down this space
walked the Archbishop and his canons, and after them followed those five
stately figures in splendid harness, each bearing his feudal banner--and
riding!

Oh, that was a magnificent thing to see. Riding down the cavernous
vastness of the building through the rich lights streaming in long rays
from the pictured windows--oh, there was never anything so grand!

They rode clear to the choir--as much as four hundred feet from the
door, it was said. Then the Archbishop dismissed them, and they made
deep obeisance till their plumes touched their horses' necks, then made
those proud prancing and mincing and dancing creatures go backward all
the way to the door--which was pretty to see, and graceful; then they
stood them on their hind-feet and spun them around and plunged away and
disappeared.

For some minutes there was a deep hush, a waiting pause; a silence so
profound that it was as if all those packed thousands there were steeped
in dreamless slumber--why, you could even notice the faintest sounds,
like the drowsy buzzing of insects; then came a mighty flood of rich
strains from four hundred silver trumpets, and then, framed in the
pointed archway of the great west door, appeared Joan and the King. They
advanced slowly, side by side, through a tempest of welcome--explosion
after explosion of cheers and cries, mingled with the deep thunders of
the organ and rolling tides of triumphant song from chanting choirs.
Behind Joan and the King came the Paladin and the Banner displayed; and
a majestic figure he was, and most proud and lofty in his bearing, for
he knew that the people were marking him and taking note of the gorgeous
state dress which covered his armor.

At his side was the Sire d'Albret, proxy for the Constable of France,
bearing the Sword of State.

After these, in order of rank, came a body royally attired representing
the lay peers of France; it consisted of three princes of the blood, and
La Tremouille and the young De Laval brothers.

These were followed by the representatives of the ecclesiastical
peers--the Archbishop of Rheims, and the Bishops of Laon, Chalons,
Orleans, and one other.

Behind these came the Grand Staff, all our great generals and famous
names, and everybody was eager to get a sight of them. Through all the
din one could hear shouts all along that told you where two of them
were: “Live the Bastard of Orleans!” “Satan La Hire forever!”

The August procession reached its appointed place in time, and the
solemnities of the Coronation began. They were long and imposing--with
prayers, and anthems, and sermons, and everything that is right for such
occasions; and Joan was at the King's side all these hours, with her
Standard in her hand. But at last came the grand act: the King took
the oath, he was anointed with the sacred oil; a splendid personage,
followed by train-bearers and other attendants, approached, bearing the
Crown of France upon a cushion, and kneeling offered it. The King seemed
to hesitate--in fact, did hesitate; for he put out his hand and then
stopped with it there in the air over the crown, the fingers in the
attitude of taking hold of it. But that was for only a moment--though
a moment is a notable something when it stops the heartbeat of twenty
thousand people and makes them catch their breath. Yes, only a moment;
then he caught Joan's eye, and she gave him a look with all the joy of
her thankful great soul in it; then he smiled, and took the Crown of
France in his hand, and right finely and right royally lifted it up and
set it upon his head.

Then what a crash there was! All about us cries and cheers, and the
chanting of the choirs and groaning of the organ; and outside the
clamoring of the bells and the booming of the cannon. The fantastic
dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the peasant-child
stood fulfilled; the English power was broken, the Heir of France was
crowned.

She was like one transfigured, so divine was the joy that shone in her
face as she sank to her knees at the King's feet and looked up at him
through her tears. Her lips were quivering, and her words came soft and
low and broken:

“Now, O gentle King, is the pleasure of God accomplished according to
His command that you should come to Rheims and receive the crown that
belongeth of right to you, and unto none other. My work which was given
me to do is finished; give me your peace, and let me go back to my
mother, who is poor and old, and has need of me.”

The King raised her up, and there before all that host he praised her
great deeds in most noble terms; and there he confirmed her nobility and
titles, making her the equal of a count in rank, and also appointed a
household and officers for her according to her dignity; and then he
said:

“You have saved the crown. Speak--require--demand; and whatsoever grace
you ask it shall be granted, though it make the kingdom poor to meet
it.”

Now that was fine, that was royal. Joan was on her knees again
straightway, and said:

“Then, O gentle King, if out of your compassion you will speak the word,
I pray you give commandment that my village, poor and hard pressed by
reason of war, may have its taxes remitted.”

“It is so commanded. Say on.”

“That is all.”

“All? Nothing but that?”

“It is all. I have no other desire.”

“But that is nothing--less than nothing. Ask--do not be afraid.”

“Indeed, I cannot, gentle King. Do not press me. I will not have aught
else, but only this alone.”

The King seemed nonplussed, and stood still a moment, as if trying to
comprehend and realize the full stature of this strange unselfishness.
Then he raised his head and said:

“Who has won a kingdom and crowned its King; and all she asks and all
she will take is this poor grace--and even this is for others, not for
herself. And it is well; her act being proportioned to the dignity of
one who carries in her head and heart riches which outvalue any that
any King could add, though he gave his all. She shall have her way. Now,
therefore, it is decreed that from this day forth Domremy, natal village
of Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France, called the Maid of Orleans, is
freed from all taxation forever.” Whereat the silver horns blew a
jubilant blast.

There, you see, she had had a vision of this very scene the time she was
in a trance in the pastures of Domremy and we asked her to name to boon
she would demand of the King if he should ever chance to tell her she
might claim one. But whether she had the vision or not, this act showed
that after all the dizzy grandeurs that had come upon her, she was still
the same simple, unselfish creature that she was that day.

Yes, Charles VII. remitted those taxes “forever.” Often the gratitude of
kings and nations fades and their promises are forgotten or deliberately
violated; but you, who are children of France, should remember with
pride that France has kept this one faithfully. Sixty-three years have
gone by since that day. The taxes of the region wherein Domremy lies
have been collected sixty-three times since then, and all the villages
of that region have paid except that one--Domremy. The tax-gatherer
never visits Domremy. Domremy has long ago forgotten what that dread
sorrow-sowing apparition is like. Sixty-three tax-books have been filed
meantime, and they lie yonder with the other public records, and any
may see them that desire it. At the top of every page in the sixty-three
books stands the name of a village, and below that name its weary burden
of taxation is figured out and displayed; in the case of all save one.
It is true, just as I tell you. In each of the sixty-three books there
is a page headed “Domremi,” but under that name not a figure appears.
Where the figures should be, there are three words written; and the same
words have been written every year for all these years; yes, it is a
blank page, with always those grateful words lettered across the face of
it--a touching memorial. Thus:

  DOMREMI | | | | RIEN--LA PUCELLE

 “NOTHING--THE MAID OF ORLEANS.”

How brief it is; yet how much it says! It is the nation speaking. You
have the spectacle of that unsentimental thing, a Government, making
reverence to that name and saying to its agent, “Uncover, and pass on;
it is France that commands.” Yes, the promise has been kept; it will be
kept always; “forever” was the King's word. (1) At two o'clock in the
afternoon the ceremonies of the Coronation came at last to an end; then
the procession formed once more, with Joan and the King at its head,
and took up its solemn march through the midst of the church, all
instruments and all people making such clamor of rejoicing noises as
was, indeed, a marvel to hear. An so ended the third of the great days
of Joan's life. And how close together they stand--May 8th, June 18th,
July 17th!

(1) IT was faithfully kept during three hundred and sixty years and
more; then the over-confident octogenarian's prophecy failed. During the
tumult of the French Revolution the promise was forgotten and the grace
withdrawn. It has remained in disuse ever since. Joan never asked to be
remembered, but France has remembered her with an inextinguishable love
and reverence; Joan never asked for a statue, but France has lavished
them upon her; Joan never asked for a church for Domremy, but France
is building one; Joan never asked for saintship, but even that is
impending. Everything which Joan of Arc did not ask for has been given
her, and with a noble profusion; but the one humble little thing which
she did ask for and get has been taken away from her. There is something
infinitely pathetic about this. France owes Domremy a hundred years of
taxes, and could hardly find a citizen within her borders who would vote
against the payment of the debt. -- NOTE BY THE TRANSLATOR.





36 Joan Hears News from Home

WE MOUNTED and rode, a spectacle to remember, a most noble display of
rich vestments and nodding plumes, and as we moved between the banked
multitudes they sank down all along abreast of us as we advanced, like
grain before the reaper, and kneeling hailed with a rousing welcome the
consecrated King and his companion the Deliverer of France. But by and
by when we had paraded about the chief parts of the city and were come
near to the end of our course, we being now approaching the Archbishop's
palace, one saw on the right, hard by the inn that is called the Zebra,
a strange thing--two men not kneeling but standing! Standing in the
front rank of the kneelers; unconscious, transfixed, staring. Yes, and
clothed in the coarse garb of the peasantry, these two. Two halberdiers
sprang at them in a fury to teach them better manners; but just as they
seized them Joan cried out “Forbear!” and slid from her saddle and
flung her arms about one of those peasants, calling him by all manner of
endearing names, and sobbing. For it was her father; and the other was
her uncle, Laxart.

The news flew everywhere, and shouts of welcome were raised, and in just
one little moment those two despised and unknown plebeians were become
famous and popular and envied, and everybody was in a fever to get sight
of them and be able to say, all their lives long, that they had seen the
father of Joan of Arc and the brother of her mother. How easy it was for
her to do miracles like to this! She was like the sun; on whatsoever dim
and humble object her rays fell, that thing was straightway drowned in
glory.

All graciously the King said:

“Bring them to me.”

And she brought them; she radiant with happiness and affection, they
trembling and scared, with their caps in their shaking hands; and there
before all the world the King gave them his hand to kiss, while the
people gazed in envy and admiration; and he said to old D'Arc:

“Give God thanks for that you are father to this child, this dispenser
of immortalities. You who bear a name that will still live in the mouths
of men when all the race of kings has been forgotten, it is not meet
that you bare your head before the fleeting fames and dignities of a
day--cover yourself!” And truly he looked right fine and princely when
he said that. Then he gave order that the Bailly of Rheims be brought;
and when he was come, and stood bent low and bare, the King said to him,
“These two are guests of France;” and bade him use them hospitably.

I may as well say now as later, that Papa D'Arc and Laxart were stopping
in that little Zebra inn, and that there they remained. Finer quarters
were offered them by the Bailly, also public distinctions and brave
entertainment; but they were frightened at these projects, they being
only humble and ignorant peasants; so they begged off, and had peace.
They could not have enjoyed such things. Poor souls, they did not even
know what to do with their hands, and it took all their attention to
keep from treading on them. The Bailly did the best he could in the
circumstances. He made the innkeeper place a whole floor at their
disposal, and told him to provide everything they might desire, and
charge all to the city. Also the Bailly gave them a horse apiece and
furnishings; which so overwhelmed them with pride and delight and
astonishment that they couldn't speak a word; for in their lives they
had never dreamed of wealth like this, and could not believe, at first,
that the horses were real and would not dissolve to a mist and blow
away. They could not unglue their minds from those grandeurs, and were
always wrenching the conversation out of its groove and dragging the
matter of animals into it, so that they could say “my horse” here, and
“my horse” there and yonder and all around, and taste the words and lick
their chops over them, and spread their legs and hitch their thumbs in
their armpits, and feel as the good God feels when He looks out on His
fleets of constellations plowing the awful deeps of space and reflects
with satisfaction that they are His--all His. Well, they were the
happiest old children one ever saw, and the simplest.

The city gave a grand banquet to the King and Joan in mid-afternoon, and
to the Court and the Grand Staff; and about the middle of it Pere D'Arc
and Laxart were sent for, but would not venture until it was promised
that they might sit in a gallery and be all by themselves and see all
that was to be seen and yet be unmolested. And so they sat there and
looked down upon the splendid spectacle, and were moved till the tears
ran down their cheeks to see the unbelievable honors that were paid to
their small darling, and how naively serene and unafraid she sat there
with those consuming glories beating upon her.

But at last her serenity was broken up. Yes, it stood the strain of
the King's gracious speech; and of D'Alencon's praiseful words, and the
Bastard's; and even La Hire's thunder-blast, which took the place by
storm; but at last, as I have said, they brought a force to bear which
was too strong for her. For at the close the King put up his hand to
command silence, and so waited, with his hand up, till every sound was
dead and it was as if one could almost the stillness, so profound it
was. Then out of some remote corner of that vast place there rose
a plaintive voice, and in tones most tender and sweet and rich came
floating through that enchanted hush our poor old simple song “L'Arbre
Fee Bourlemont!” and then Joan broke down and put her face in her
hands and cried. Yes, you see, all in a moment the pomps and grandeurs
dissolved away and she was a little child again herding her sheep with
the tranquil pastures stretched about her, and war and wounds and blood
and death and the mad frenzy and turmoil of battle a dream. Ah, that
shows you the power of music, that magician of magicians, who lifts his
wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the
phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.

That was the King's invention, that sweet and dear surprise. Indeed,
he had fine things hidden away in his nature, though one seldom got a
glimpse of them, with that scheming Tremouille and those others always
standing in the light, and he so indolently content to save himself fuss
and argument and let them have their way.

At the fall of night we the Domremy contingent of the personal staff
were with the father and uncle at the inn, in their private parlor,
brewing generous drinks and breaking ground for a homely talk about
Domremy and the neighbors, when a large parcel arrived from Joan to be
kept till she came; and soon she came herself and sent her guard away,
saying she would take one of her father's rooms and sleep under his
roof, and so be at home again. We of the staff rose and stood, as was
meet, until she made us sit. Then she turned and saw that the two
old men had gotten up too, and were standing in an embarrassed and
unmilitary way; which made her want to laugh, but she kept it in, as
not wishing to hurt them; and got them to their seats and snuggled down
between them, and took a hand of each of them upon her knees and nestled
her own hands in them, and said:

“Now we will nave no more ceremony, but be kin and playmates as in other
times; for I am done with the great wars now, and you two will take
me home with you, and I shall see--” She stopped, and for a moment her
happy face sobered, as if a doubt or a presentiment had flitted through
her mind; then it cleared again, and she said, with a passionate
yearning, “Oh, if the day were but come and we could start!”

The old father was surprised, and said:

“Why, child, are you in earnest? Would you leave doing these wonders
that make you to be praised by everybody while there is still so much
glory to be won; and would you go out from this grand comradeship with
princes and generals to be a drudging villager again and a nobody? It is
not rational.”

“No,” said the uncle, Laxart, “it is amazing to hear, and indeed not
understandable. It is a stranger thing to hear her say she will stop
the soldiering that it was to hear her say she would begin it; and I who
speak to you can say in all truth that that was the strangest word that
ever I had heard till this day and hour. I would it could be explained.”

“It is not difficult,” said Joan. “I was not ever fond of wounds and
suffering, nor fitted by my nature to inflict them; and quarrelings
did always distress me, and noise and tumult were against my liking, my
disposition being toward peace and quietness, and love for all things
that have life; and being made like this, how could I bear to think of
wars and blood, and the pain that goes with them, and the sorrow
and mourning that follow after? But by his angels God laid His great
commands upon me, and could I disobey? I did as I was bid. Did He
command me to do many things? No; only two: to raise the siege of
Orleans, and crown the King at Rheims. The task is finished, and I am
free. Has ever a poor soldier fallen in my sight, whether friend or foe,
and I not felt the pain in my own body, and the grief of his home-mates
in my own heart? No, not one; and, oh, it is such bliss to know that my
release is won, and that I shall not any more see these cruel things or
suffer these tortures of the mind again! Then why should I not go to
my village and be as I was before? It is heaven! and ye wonder that I
desire it. Ah, ye are men--just men! My mother would understand.”

They didn't quite know what to say; so they sat still awhile, looking
pretty vacant. Then old D'Arc said:

“Yes, your mother--that is true. I never saw such a woman. She worries,
and worries, and worries; and wakes nights, and lies so, thinking--that
is, worrying; worrying about you. And when the night storms go raging
along, she moans and says, 'Ah, God pity her, she is out in this with
her poor wet soldiers.' And when the lightning glares and the thunder
crashes she wrings her hands and trembles, saying, 'It is like the awful
cannon and the flash, and yonder somewhere she is riding down upon the
spouting guns and I not there to protect her.”

“Ah, poor mother, it is pity, it is pity!”

“Yes, a most strange woman, as I have noticed a many times. When there
is news of a victory and all the village goes mad with pride and joy,
she rushes here and there in a maniacal frenzy till she finds out the
one only thing she cares to know--that you are safe; then down she goes
on her knees in the dirt and praises God as long as there is any breath
left in her body; and all on your account, for she never mentions
the battle once. And always she says, 'Now it is over--now France is
saved--now she will come home'--and always is disappointed and goes
about mourning.”

“Don't, father! it breaks my heart. I will be so good to her when I get
home. I will do her work for her, and be her comfort, and she shall not
suffer any more through me.”

There was some more talk of this sort, then Uncle Laxart said:

“You have done the will of God, dear, and are quits; it is true, and
none may deny it; but what of the King? You are his best soldier; what
if he command you to stay?”

That was a crusher--and sudden! It took Joan a moment or two to recover
from the shock of it; then she said, quite simply and resignedly:

“The King is my Lord; I am his servant.” She was silent and thoughtful
a little while, then she brightened up and said, cheerily, “But let us
drive such thoughts away--this is no time for them. Tell me about home.”

So the two old gossips talked and talked; talked about everything and
everybody in the village; and it was good to hear. Joan out of her
kindness tried to get us into the conversation, but that failed, of
course. She was the Commander-in-Chief, we were nobodies; her name was
the mightiest in France, we were invisible atoms; she was the comrade
of princes and heroes, we of the humble and obscure; she held rank above
all Personages and all Puissances whatsoever in the whole earth, by
right of baring her commission direct from God. To put it in one word,
she was JOAN OF ARC--and when that is said, all is said. To us she was
divine. Between her and us lay the bridgeless abyss which that word
implies. We could not be familiar with her. No, you can see yourselves
that that would have been impossible.

And yet she was so human, too, and so good and kind and dear and loving
and cheery and charming and unspoiled and unaffected! Those are all the
words I think of now, but they are not enough; no, they are too few and
colorless and meager to tell it all, or tell the half. Those simple old
men didn't realize her; they couldn't; they had never known any people
but human beings, and so they had no other standard to measure her by.
To them, after their first little shyness had worn off, she was just a
girl--that was all. It was amazing. It made one shiver, sometimes, to
see how calm and easy and comfortable they were in her presence, and
hear them talk to her exactly as they would have talked to any other
girl in France.

Why, that simple old Laxart sat up there and droned out the most tedious
and empty tale one ever heard, and neither he nor Papa D'Arc ever gave
a thought to the badness of the etiquette of it, or ever suspected that
that foolish tale was anything but dignified and valuable history. There
was not an atom of value in it; and whilst they thought it distressing
and pathetic, it was in fact not pathetic at all, but actually
ridiculous. At least it seemed so to me, and it seems so yet. Indeed, I
know it was, because it made Joan laugh; and the more sorrowful it got
the more it made her laugh; and the Paladin said that he could have
laughed himself if she had not been there, and Noel Rainguesson said the
same. It was about old Laxart going to a funeral there at Domremy two or
three weeks back. He had spots all over his face and hands, and he got
Joan to rub some healing ointment on them, and while she was doing it,
and comforting him, and trying to say pitying things to him, he told
her how it happened. And first he asked her if she remembered that black
bull calf that she left behind when she came away, and she said indeed
she did, and he was a dear, and she loved him so, and was he well?--and
just drowned him in questions about that creature. And he said it was a
young bull now, and very frisky; and he was to bear a principal hand at
a funeral; and she said, “The bull?” and he said, “No, myself”; but said
the bull did take a hand, but not because of his being invited, for
he wasn't; but anyway he was away over beyond the Fairy Tree, and fell
asleep on the grass with his Sunday funeral clothes on, and a long black
rag on his hat and hanging down his back; and when he woke he saw by the
sun how late it was, and not a moment to lose; and jumped up terribly
worried, and saw the young bull grazing there, and thought maybe he
could ride part way on him and gain time; so he tied a rope around the
bull's body to hold on by, and put a halter on him to steer with,
and jumped on and started; but it was all new to the bull, and he was
discontented with it, and scurried around and bellowed and reared and
pranced, and Uncle Laxart was satisfied, and wanted to get off and go
by the next bull or some other way that was quieter, but he didn't
dare try; and it was getting very warm for him, too, and disturbing and
wearisome, and not proper for Sunday; but by and by the bull lost all
his temper, and went tearing down the slope with his tail in the air and
blowing in the most awful way; and just in the edge of the village
he knocked down some beehives, and the bees turned out and joined the
excursion, and soared along in a black cloud that nearly hid those other
two from sight, and prodded them both, and jabbed them and speared them
and spiked them, and made them bellow and shriek, and shriek and bellow;
and here they came roaring through the village like a hurricane, and
took the funeral procession right in the center, and sent that section
of it sprawling, and galloped over it, and the rest scattered apart and
fled screeching in every direction, every person with a layer of bees on
him, and not a rag of that funeral left but the corpse; and finally
the bull broke for the river and jumped in, and when they fished Uncle
Laxart out he was nearly drowned, and his face looked like a pudding
with raisins in it. And then he turned around, this old simpleton, and
looked a long time in a dazed way at Joan where she had her face in a
cushion, dying, apparently, and says:

“What do you reckon she is laughing at?”

And old D'Arc stood looking at her the same way, sort of absently
scratching his head; but had to give it up, and said he didn't
know--“must have been something that happened when we weren't noticing.”

Yes, both of those old people thought that that tale was pathetic;
whereas to my mind it was purely ridiculous, and not in any way valuable
to any one. It seemed so to me then, and it seems so to me yet. And as
for history, it does not resemble history; for the office of history is
to furnish serious and important facts that teach; whereas this strange
and useless event teaches nothing; nothing that I can see, except not
to ride a bull to a funeral; and surely no reflecting person needs to be
taught that.





37 Again to Arms

NOW THESE were nobles, you know, by decree of the King!--these precious
old infants. But they did not realize it; they could not be called
conscious of it; it was an abstraction, a phantom; to them it had no
substance; their minds could not take hold of it. No, they did not
bother about their nobility; they lived in their horses. The horses were
solid; they were visible facts, and would make a mighty stir in Domremy.
Presently something was said about the Coronation, and old D'Arc said
it was going to be a grand thing to be able to say, when they got home,
that they were present in the very town itself when it happened. Joan
looked troubled, and said:

“Ah, that reminds me. You were here and you didn't send me word. In the
town, indeed! Why, you could have sat with the other nobles, and been
welcome; and could have looked upon the crowning itself, and carried
that home to tell. Ah, why did you use me so, and send me no word?”

The old father was embarrassed, now, quite visibly embarrassed, and had
the air of one who does not quite know what to say. But Joan was looking
up in his face, her hands upon his shoulders--waiting. He had to speak;
so presently he drew her to his breast, which was heaving with emotion;
and he said, getting out his words with difficulty:

“There, hide your face, child, and let your old father humble himself
and make his confession. I--I--don't you see, don't you understand?--I
could not know that these grandeurs would not turn your young head--it
would be only natural. I might shame you before these great per--”

“Father!”

“And then I was afraid, as remembering that cruel thing I said once in
my sinful anger. Oh, appointed of God to be a soldier, and the greatest
in the land! and in my ignorant anger I said I would drown you with my
own hands if you unsexed yourself and brought shame to your name and
family. Ah, how could I ever have said it, and you so good and dear
and innocent! I was afraid; for I was guilty. You understand it now, my
child, and you forgive?”

Do you see? Even that poor groping old land-crab, with his skull full of
pulp, had pride. Isn't it wonderful? And more--he had conscience; he had
a sense of right and wrong, such as it was; he was able to find remorse.
It looks impossible, it looks incredible, but it is not. I believe that
some day it will be found out that peasants are people. Yes, beings in
a great many respects like ourselves. And I believe that some day they
will find this out, too--and then! Well, then I think they will rise up
and demand to be regarded as part of the race, and that by consequence
there will be trouble. Whenever one sees in a book or in a king's
proclamation those words “the nation,” they bring before us the upper
classes; only those; we know no other “nation”; for us and the kings no
other “nation” exists. But from the day that I saw old D'Arc the peasant
acting and feeling just as I should have acted and felt myself, I have
carried the conviction in my heart that our peasants are not merely
animals, beasts of burden put here by the good God to produce food
and comfort for the “nation,” but something more and better. You
look incredulous. Well, that is your training; it is the training of
everybody; but as for me, I thank that incident for giving me a better
light, and I have never forgotten it.

Let me see--where was I? One's mind wanders around here and there and
yonder, when one is old. I think I said Joan comforted him. Certainly,
that is what she would do--there was no need to say that. She coaxed him
and petted him and caressed him, and laid the memory of that old hard
speech of his to rest. Laid it to rest until she should be dead. Then
he would remember it again--yes, yes! Lord, how those things sting, and
burn, and gnaw--the things which we did against the innocent dead! And
we say in our anguish, “If they could only come back!” Which is all very
well to say, but, as far as I can see, it doesn't profit anything. In my
opinion the best way is not to do the thing in the first place. And I am
not alone in this; I have heard our two knights say the same thing; and
a man there in Orleans--no, I believe it was at Beaugency, or one
of those places--it seems more as if it was at Beaugency than the
others--this man said the same thing exactly; almost the same words; a
dark man with a cast in his eye and one leg shorter than the other. His
name was--was--it is singular that I can't call that man's name; I had
it in my mind only a moment ago, and I know it begins with--no, I don't
remember what it begins with; but never mind, let it go; I will think of
it presently, and then I will tell you.

Well, pretty soon the old father wanted to know how Joan felt when
she was in the thick of a battle, with the bright blades hacking and
flashing all around her, and the blows rapping and slatting on her
shield, and blood gushing on her from the cloven ghastly face and broken
teeth of the neighbor at her elbow, and the perilous sudden back surge
of massed horses upon a person when the front ranks give way before a
heavy rush of the enemy, and men tumble limp and groaning out of saddles
all around, and battle-flags falling from dead hands wipe across one's
face and hide the tossing turmoil a moment, and in the reeling
and swaying and laboring jumble one's horse's hoofs sink into soft
substances and shrieks of pain respond, and presently--panic! rush!
swarm! flight! and death and hell following after! And the old fellow
got ever so much excited; and strode up and down, his tongue going like
a mill, asking question after question and never waiting for an answer;
and finally he stood Joan up in the middle of the room and stepped off
and scanned her critically, and said:

“No--I don't understand it. You are so little. So little and slender.
When you had your armor on, to-day, it gave one a sort of notion of it;
but in these pretty silks and velvets, you are only a dainty page, not
a league-striding war-colossus, moving in clouds and darkness and
breathing smoke and thunder. I would God I might see you at it and go
tell your mother! That would help her sleep, poor thing! Here--teach me
the arts of the soldier, that I may explain them to her.”

And she did it. She gave him a pike, and put him through the manual
of arms; and made him do the steps, too. His marching was incredibly
awkward and slovenly, and so was his drill with the pike; but he didn't
know it, and was wonderfully pleased with himself, and mightily excited
and charmed with the ringing, crisp words of command. I am obliged
to say that if looking proud and happy when one is marching were
sufficient, he would have been the perfect soldier.

And he wanted a lesson in sword-play, and got it. But of course that
was beyond him; he was too old. It was beautiful to see Joan handle the
foils, but the old man was a bad failure. He was afraid of the things,
and skipped and dodged and scrambled around like a woman who has lost
her mind on account of the arrival of a bat. He was of no good as
an exhibition. But if La Hire had only come in, that would have been
another matter. Those two fenced often; I saw them many times. True,
Joan was easily his master, but it made a good show for all that, for
La Hire was a grand swordsman. What a swift creature Joan was! You would
see her standing erect with her ankle-bones together and her foil arched
over her head, the hilt in one hand and the button in the other--the old
general opposite, bent forward, left hand reposing on his back, his
foil advanced, slightly wiggling and squirming, his watching eye boring
straight into hers--and all of a sudden she would give a spring forward,
and back again; and there she was, with the foil arched over her head as
before. La Hire had been hit, but all that the spectator saw of it was
a something like a thin flash of light in the air, but nothing distinct,
nothing definite.

We kept the drinkables moving, for that would please the Bailly and the
landlord; and old Laxart and D'Arc got to feeling quite comfortable, but
without being what you could call tipsy. They got out the presents which
they had been buying to carry home--humble things and cheap, but they
would be fine there, and welcome. And they gave to Joan a present from
Pere Fronte and one from her mother--the one a little leaden image of
the Holy Virgin, the other half a yard of blue silk ribbon; and she
was as pleased as a child; and touched, too, as one could see plainly
enough. Yes, she kissed those poor things over and over again, as if
they had been something costly and wonderful; and she pinned the Virgin
on her doublet, and sent for her helmet and tied the ribbon on that;
first one way, then another; then a new way, then another new way; and
with each effort perching the helmet on her hand and holding it off
this way and that, and canting her head to one side and then the other,
examining the effect, as a bird does when it has got a new bug. And she
said she could almost wish she was going to the wars again; for then she
would fight with the better courage, as having always with her something
which her mother's touch had blessed.

Old Laxart said he hoped she would go to the wars again, but home first,
for that all the people there were cruel anxious to see her--and so he
went on:

“They are proud of you, dear. Yes, prouder than any village ever was of
anybody before. And indeed it is right and rational; for it is the first
time a village has ever had anybody like you to be proud of and call its
own. And it is strange and beautiful how they try to give your name to
every creature that has a sex that is convenient. It is but half a year
since you began to be spoken of and left us, and so it is surprising to
see how many babies there are already in that region that are named
for you. First it was just Joan; then it was Joan-Orleans; then
Joan-Orleans-Beaugency-Patay; and now the next ones will have a lot
of towns and the Coronation added, of course. Yes, and the animals the
same. They know how you love animals, and so they try to do you honor
and show their love for you by naming all those creatures after you;
insomuch that if a body should step out and call 'Joan of Arc--come!'
there would be a landslide of cats and all such things, each supposing
it was the one wanted, and all willing to take the benefit of the doubt,
anyway, for the sake of the food that might be on delivery. The kitten
you left behind--the last stray you fetched home--bears you name, now,
and belongs to Pere Fronte, and is the pet and pride of the village;
and people have come miles to look at it and pet it and stare at it and
wonder over it because it was Joan of Arc's cat. Everybody will tell you
that; and one day when a stranger threw a stone at it, not knowing it
was your cat, the village rose against him as one man and hanged him!
And but for Pere Fronte--”

There was an interruption. It was a messenger from the King, bearing
a note for Joan, which I read to her, saying he had reflected, and had
consulted his other generals, and was obliged to ask her to remain at
the head of the army and withdraw her resignation. Also, would she
come immediately and attend a council of war? Straightway, at a little
distance, military commands and the rumble of drums broke on the still
night, and we knew that her guard was approaching.

Deep disappointment clouded her face for just one moment and no
more--it passed, and with it the homesick girl, and she was Joan of Arc,
Commander-in-Chief again, and ready for duty.





38 The King Cries “Forward!”

IN MY double quality of page and secretary I followed Joan to the
council. She entered that presence with the bearing of a grieved
goddess. What was become of the volatile child that so lately was
enchanted with a ribbon and suffocated with laughter over the distress
of a foolish peasant who had stormed a funeral on the back of a
bee-stung bull? One may not guess. Simply it was gone, and had left no
sign. She moved straight to the council-table, and stood. Her glance
swept from face to face there, and where it fell, these lit it as with a
torch, those it scorched as with a brand. She knew where to strike. She
indicated the generals with a nod, and said:

“My business is not with you. You have not craved a council of war.”
 Then she turned toward the King's privy council, and continued: “No; it
is with you. A council of war! It is amazing. There is but one thing to
do, and only one, and lo, ye call a council of war! Councils of war have
no value but to decide between two or several doubtful courses. But a
council of war when there is only one course? Conceive of a man in a
boat and his family in the water, and he goes out among his friends to
ask what he would better do? A council of war, name of God! To determine
what?”

She stopped, and turned till her eyes rested upon the face of La
Tremouille; and so she stood, silent, measuring him, the excitement in
all faces burning steadily higher and higher, and all pulses beating
faster and faster; then she said, with deliberation:

“Every sane man--whose loyalty is to his King and not a show and a
pretense--knows that there is but one rational thing before us--the
march upon Paris!”

Down came the fist of La Hire with an approving crash upon the table.
La Tremouille turned white with anger, but he pulled himself firmly
together and held his peace. The King's lazy blood was stirred and
his eye kindled finely, for the spirit of war was away down in him
somewhere, and a frank, bold speech always found it and made it tingle
gladsomely. Joan waited to see if the chief minister might wish to
defend his position; but he was experienced and wise, and not a man to
waste his forces where the current was against him. He would wait; the
King's private ear would be at his disposal by and by.

That pious fox the Chancellor of France took the word now. He washed his
soft hands together, smiling persuasively, and said to Joan:

“Would it be courteous, your Excellency, to move abruptly from here
without waiting for an answer from the Duke of Burgundy? You may not
know that we are negotiating with his Highness, and that there is
likely to be a fortnight's truce between us; and on his part a pledge to
deliver Paris into our hands without the cost of a blow or the fatigue
of a march thither.”

Joan turned to him and said, gravely:

“This is not a confessional, my lord. You were not obliged to expose
that shame here.”

The Chancellor's face reddened, and he retorted:

“Shame? What is there shameful about it?”

Joan answered in level, passionless tones:

“One may describe it without hunting far for words. I knew of this poor
comedy, my lord, although it was not intended that I should know. It is
to the credit of the devisers of it that they tried to conceal it--this
comedy whose text and impulse are describable in two words.”

The Chancellor spoke up with a fine irony in his manner:

“Indeed? And will your Excellency be good enough to utter them?”

“Cowardice and treachery!”

The fists of all the generals came down this time, and again the King's
eye sparkled with pleasure. The Chancellor sprang to his feet and
appealed to his Majesty:

“Sire, I claim your protection.”

But the King waved him to his seat again, saying:

“Peace. She had a right to be consulted before that thing was
undertaken, since it concerned war as well as politics. It is but just
that she be heard upon it now.”

The Chancellor sat down trembling with indignation, and remarked to
Joan:

“Out of charity I will consider that you did not know who devised this
measure which you condemn in so candid language.”

“Save your charity for another occasion, my lord,” said Joan, as calmly
as before. “Whenever anything is done to injure the interests and
degrade the honor of France, all but the dead know how to name the two
conspirators-in-chief--”

“Sir, sire! this insinuation--”

“It is not an insinuation, my lord,” said Joan, placidly, “it is
a charge. I bring it against the King's chief minister and his
Chancellor.”

Both men were on their feet now, insisting that the King modify Joan's
frankness; but he was not minded to do it. His ordinary councils were
stale water--his spirit was drinking wine, now, and the taste of it was
good. He said:

“Sit--and be patient. What is fair for one must in fairness be allowed
the other. Consider--and be just. When have you two spared her? What
dark charges and harsh names have you withheld when you spoke of her?”
 Then he added, with a veiled twinkle in his eyes, “If these are offenses
I see no particular difference between them, except that she says her
hard things to your faces, whereas you say yours behind her back.”

He was pleased with that neat shot and the way it shriveled those two
people up, and made La Hire laugh out loud and the other generals softly
quake and chuckle. Joan tranquilly resumed:

“From the first, we have been hindered by this policy of shilly-shally;
this fashion of counseling and counseling and counseling where no
counseling is needed, but only fighting. We took Orleans on the 8th of
May, and could have cleared the region round about in three days and
saved the slaughter of Patay. We could have been in Rheims six weeks
ago, and in Paris now; and would see the last Englishman pass out of
France in half a year. But we struck no blow after Orleans, but went off
into the country--what for? Ostensibly to hold councils; really to give
Bedford time to send reinforcements to Talbot--which he did; and Patay
had to be fought. After Patay, more counseling, more waste of precious
time. Oh, my King, I would that you would be persuaded!” She began to
warm up, now. “Once more we have our opportunity. If we rise and strike,
all is well. Bid me march upon Paris. In twenty days it shall be yours,
and in six months all France! Here is half a year's work before us; if
this chance be wasted, I give you twenty years to do it in. Speak the
word, O gentle King--speak but the one--”

“I cry you mercy!” interrupted the Chancellor, who saw a dangerous
enthusiasm rising in the King's face. “March upon Paris? Does your
Excellency forget that the way bristles with English strongholds?”

“That for your English strongholds!” and Joan snapped her fingers
scornfully. “Whence have we marched in these last days? From Gien. And
whither? To Rheims. What bristled between? English strongholds. What are
they now? French ones--and they never cost a blow!” Here applause broke
out from the group of generals, and Joan had to pause a moment to let it
subside. “Yes, English strongholds bristled before us; now French
ones bristle behind us. What is the argument? A child can read it.
The strongholds between us and Paris are garrisoned by no new breed of
English, but by the same breed as those others--with the same fears, the
same questionings, the same weaknesses, the same disposition to see the
heavy hand of God descending upon them. We have but to march!--on the
instant--and they are ours, Paris is ours, France is ours! Give the
word, O my King, command your servant to--”

“Stay!” cried the Chancellor. “It would be madness to put our affront
upon his Highness the Duke of Burgundy. By the treaty which we have
every hope to make with him--”

“Oh, the treaty which we hope to make with him! He has scorned you for
years, and defied you. Is it your subtle persuasions that have softened
his manners and beguiled him to listen to proposals? No; it was
blows!--the blows which we gave him! That is the only teaching that
that sturdy rebel can understand. What does he care for wind? The treaty
which we hope to make with him--alack! He deliver Paris! There is no
pauper in the land that is less able to do it. He deliver Paris! Ah, but
that would make great Bedford smile! Oh, the pitiful pretext! the blind
can see that this thin pour-parler with its fifteen-day truce has no
purpose but to give Bedford time to hurry forward his forces against us.
More treachery--always treachery! We call a council of war--with nothing
to council about; but Bedford calls no council to teach him what our
course is. He knows what he would do in our place. He would hang his
traitors and march upon Paris! O gentle King, rouse! The way is open,
Paris beckons, France implores, Speak and we--”

“Sire, it is madness, sheer madness! Your Excellency, we cannot, we must
not go back from what we have done; we have proposed to treat, we must
treat with the Duke of Burgundy.”

“And we will!” said Joan.

“Ah? How?”

“At the point of the lance!”

The house rose, to a man--all that had French hearts--and let go a crack
of applause--and kept it up; and in the midst of it one heard La Hire
growl out: “At the point of the lance! By God, that is music!” The King
was up, too, and drew his sword, and took it by the blade and strode to
Joan and delivered the hilt of it into her hand, saying:

“There, the King surrenders. Carry it to Paris.”

And so the applause burst out again, and the historical council of war
that has bred so many legends was over.





39 We Win, But the King Balks

IT WAS away past midnight, and had been a tremendous day in the matter
of excitement and fatigue, but that was no matter to Joan when there was
business on hand. She did not think of bed. The generals followed her to
her official quarters, and she delivered her orders to them as fast as
she could talk, and they sent them off to their different commands as
fast as delivered; wherefore the messengers galloping hither and thither
raised a world of clatter and racket in the still streets; and soon were
added to this the music of distant bugles and the roll of drums--notes
of preparation; for the vanguard would break camp at dawn.

The generals were soon dismissed, but I wasn't; nor Joan; for it was my
turn to work, now. Joan walked the floor and dictated a summons to
the Duke of Burgundy to lay down his arms and make peace and exchange
pardons with the King; or, if he must fight, go fight the Saracens.
“Pardonnez-vous l'un--l'autre de bon coeligeur, entierement, ainsi que
doivent faire loyaux chretiens, et, s'il vous plait de guerroyer,
allez contre les Sarrasins.” It was long, but it was good, and had the
sterling ring to it. It is my opinion that it was as fine and simple and
straightforward and eloquent a state paper as she ever uttered.

It was delivered into the hands of a courier, and he galloped away with
it. The Joan dismissed me, and told me to go to the inn and stay, and in
the morning give to her father the parcel which she had left there. It
contained presents for the Domremy relatives and friends and a peasant
dress which she had bought for herself. She said she would say good-by
to her father and uncle in the morning if it should still be their
purpose to go, instead of tarrying awhile to see the city.

I didn't say anything, of course, but I could have said that wild horses
couldn't keep those men in that town half a day. They waste the glory of
being the first to carry the great news to Domremy--the taxes remitted
forever!--and hear the bells clang and clatter, and the people cheer and
shout? Oh, not they. Patay and Orleans and the Coronation were events
which in a vague way these men understood to be colossal; but they were
colossal mists, films, abstractions; this was a gigantic reality!

When I got there, do you suppose they were abed! Quite the reverse.
They and the rest were as mellow as mellow could be; and the Paladin was
doing his battles in great style, and the old peasants were endangering
the building with their applause. He was doing Patay now; and was
bending his big frame forward and laying out the positions and movements
with a rake here and a rake there of his formidable sword on the floor,
and the peasants were stooped over with their hands on their spread
knees observing with excited eyes and ripping out ejaculations of wonder
and admiration all along:

“Yes, here we were, waiting--waiting for the word; our horses fidgeting
and snorting and dancing to get away, we lying back on the bridles till
our bodies fairly slanted to the rear; the word rang out at last--'Go!'
and we went!

“Went? There was nothing like it ever seen! Where we swept by squads of
scampering English, the mere wind of our passage laid them flat in
piles and rows! Then we plunged into the ruck of Fastolfe's frantic
battle-corps and tore through it like a hurricane, leaving a causeway of
the dead stretching far behind; no tarrying, no slacking rein, but on!
on! on! far yonder in the distance lay our prey--Talbot and his host
looming vast and dark like a storm-cloud brooding on the sea! Down we
swooped upon them, glooming all the air with a quivering pall of dead
leaves flung up by the whirlwind of our flight. In another moment
we should have struck them as world strikes world when disorbited
constellations crash into the Milky way, but by misfortune and the
inscrutable dispensation of God I was recognized! Talbot turned white,
and shouting, 'Save yourselves, it is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of
Arc!' drove his spurs home till they met in the middle of his horse's
entrails, and fled the field with his billowing multitudes at his back!
I could have cursed myself for not putting on a disguise. I saw reproach
in the eyes of her Excellency, and was bitterly ashamed. I had caused
what seemed an irreparable disaster. Another might have gone aside to
grieve, as not seeing any way to mend it; but I thank God I am not of
those. Great occasions only summon as with a trumpet-call the slumbering
reserves of my intellect. I saw my opportunity in an instant--in
the next I was away! Through the woods I vanished--fst!--like an
extinguished light! Away around through the curtaining forest I sped,
as if on wings, none knowing what was become of me, none suspecting my
design. Minute after minute passed, on and on I flew; on, and still on;
and at last with a great cheer I flung my Banner to the breeze and burst
out in front of Talbot! Oh, it was a mighty thought! That weltering
chaos of distracted men whirled and surged backward like a tidal wave
which has struck a continent, and the day was ours! Poor helpless
creatures, they were in a trap; they were surrounded; they could not
escape to the rear, for there was our army; they could not escape to the
front, for there was I. Their hearts shriveled in their bodies, their
hands fell listless at their sides. They stood still, and at our leisure
we slaughtered them to a man; all except Talbot and Fastolfe, whom I
saved and brought away, one under each arm.”

Well, there is no denying it, the Paladin was in great form that night.
Such style! such noble grace of gesture, such grandeur of attitude,
such energy when he got going! such steady rise, on such sure wing, such
nicely graduated expenditures of voice according to the weight of
the matter, such skilfully calculated approaches to his surprises and
explosions, such belief-compelling sincerity of tone and manner, such a
climaxing peal from his brazen lungs, and such a lightning-vivid picture
of his mailed form and flaunting banner when he burst out before that
despairing army! And oh, the gentle art of the last half of his last
sentence--delivered in the careless and indolent tone of one who has
finished his real story, and only adds a colorless and inconsequential
detail because it has happened to occur to him in a lazy way.

It was a marvel to see those innocent peasants. Why, they went all to
pieces with enthusiasm, and roared out applauses fit to raise the roof
and wake the dead. When they had cooled down at last and there was
silence but for the heaving and panting, old Laxart said, admiringly:

“As it seems to me, you are an army in your single person.”

“Yes, that is what he is,” said Noel Rainguesson, convincingly. “He is
a terror; and not just in this vicinity. His mere name carries a shudder
with it to distant lands--just his mere name; and when he frowns, the
shadow of it falls as far as Rome, and the chickens go to roost an hour
before schedule time. Yes; and some say--”

“Noel Rainguesson, you are preparing yourself for trouble. I will say
just one word to you, and it will be to your advantage to--”

I saw that the usual thing had got a start. No man could prophesy when
it would end. So I delivered Joan's message and went off to bed.

Joan made her good-byes to those old fellows in the morning, with loving
embraces and many tears, and with a packed multitude for sympathizers,
and they rode proudly away on their precious horses to carry their
great news home. I had seen better riders, some will say that; for
horsemanship was a new art to them.

The vanguard moved out at dawn and took the road, with bands braying
and banners flying; the second division followed at eight. Then came the
Burgundian ambassadors, and lost us the rest of that day and the whole
of the next. But Joan was on hand, and so they had their journey for
their pains. The rest of us took the road at dawn, next morning, July
20th. And got how far? Six leagues. Tremouille was getting in his sly
work with the vacillating King, you see. The King stopped at St. Marcoul
and prayed three days. Precious time lost--for us; precious time gained
for Bedford. He would know how to use it.

We could not go on without the King; that would be to leave him in the
conspirators' camp. Joan argued, reasoned, implored; and at last we got
under way again.

Joan's prediction was verified. It was not a campaign, it was only
another holiday excursion. English strongholds lined our route; they
surrendered without a blow; we garrisoned them with Frenchmen and passed
on. Bedford was on the march against us with his new army by this time,
and on the 25th of July the hostile forces faced each other and made
preparation for battle; but Bedford's good judgment prevailed, and he
turned and retreated toward Paris. Now was our chance. Our men were in
great spirits.

Will you believe it? Our poor stick of a King allowed his worthless
advisers to persuade him to start back for Gien, whence he had set out
when we first marched for Rheims and the Coronation! And we actually did
start back. The fifteen-day truce had just been concluded with the Duke
of Burgundy, and we would go and tarry at Gien until he should deliver
Paris to us without a fight.

We marched to Bray; then the King changed his mind once more, and with
it his face toward Paris. Joan dictated a letter to the citizens of
Rheims to encourage them to keep heart in spite of the truce, and
promising to stand by them. She furnished them the news herself that the
Kin had made this truce; and in speaking of it she was her usual frank
self. She said she was not satisfied with it, and didn't know whether
she would keep it or not; that if she kept it, it would be solely out of
tenderness for the King's honor. All French children know those famous
words. How naive they are! “De cette treve qui a ete faite, je ne suis
pas contente, et je ne sais si je la tiendrai. Si je la tiens, ce sera
seulement pour garder l'honneur du roi.” But in any case, she said, she
would not allow the blood royal to be abused, and would keep the army in
good order and ready for work at the end of the truce.

Poor child, to have to fight England, Burgundy, and a French conspiracy
all at the same time--it was too bad. She was a match for the others,
but a conspiracy--ah, nobody is a match for that, when the victim that
is to be injured is weak and willing. It grieved her, these troubled
days, to be so hindered and delayed and baffled, and at times she was
sad and the tears lay near the surface. Once, talking with her good old
faithful friend and servant, the Bastard of Orleans, she said:

“Ah, if it might but please God to let me put off this steel raiment
and go back to my father and my mother, and tend my sheep again with my
sister and my brothers, who would be so glad to see me!”

By the 12th of August we were camped near Dampmartin. Later we had a
brush with Bedford's rear-guard, and had hopes of a big battle on the
morrow, but Bedford and all his force got away in the night and went on
toward Paris.

Charles sent heralds and received the submission of Beauvais. The Bishop
Pierre Cauchon, that faithful friend and slave of the English, was not
able to prevent it, though he did his best. He was obscure then, but his
name was to travel round the globe presently, and live forever in the
curses of France! Bear with me now, while I spit in fancy upon his
grave.

Compiegne surrendered, and hauled down the English flag. On the 14th we
camped two leagues from Senlis. Bedford turned and approached, and
took up a strong position. We went against him, but all our efforts to
beguile him out from his intrenchments failed, though he had promised
us a duel in the open field. Night shut down. Let him look out for the
morning! But in the morning he was gone again.

We entered Compiegne the 18th of August, turning out the English
garrison and hoisting our own flag.

On the 23d Joan gave command to move upon Paris. The King and the clique
were not satisfied with this, and retired sulking to Senlis, which had
just surrendered. Within a few days many strong places submitted--Creil,
Pont-Saint-Maxence, Choisy, Gournay-sur-Aronde, Remy, Le
Neufville-en-Hez, Moguay, Chantilly, Saintines. The English power was
tumbling, crash after crash! And still the King sulked and disapproved,
and was afraid of our movement against the capital.

On the 26th of August, 1429, Joan camped at St. Denis; in effect, under
the walls of Paris.

And still the King hung back and was afraid. If we could but have had
him there to back us with his authority! Bedford had lost heart and
decided to waive resistance and go an concentrate his strength in the
best and loyalest province remaining to him--Normandy. Ah, if we
could only have persuaded the King to come and countenance us with his
presence and approval at this supreme moment!





40 Treachery Conquers Joan

COURIER after courier was despatched to the King, and he promised to
come, but didn't. The Duke d'Alencon went to him and got his promise
again, which he broke again. Nine days were lost thus; then he came,
arriving at St. Denis September 7th.

Meantime the enemy had begun to take heart: the spiritless conduct of
the King could have no other result. Preparations had now been made to
defend the city. Joan's chances had been diminished, but she and her
generals considered them plenty good enough yet. Joan ordered the attack
for eight o'clock next morning, and at that hour it began.

Joan placed her artillery and began to pound a strong work which
protected the gate St. Honor. When it was sufficiently crippled the
assault was sounded at noon, and it was carried by storm. Then we moved
forward to storm the gate itself, and hurled ourselves against it again
and again, Joan in the lead with her standard at her side, the smoke
enveloping us in choking clouds, and the missiles flying over us and
through us as thick as hail.

In the midst of our last assault, which would have carried the gate
sure and given us Paris and in effect France, Joan was struck down by
a crossbow bolt, and our men fell back instantly and almost in a
panic--for what were they without her? She was the army, herself.

Although disabled, she refused to retire, and begged that a new assault
be made, saying it must win; and adding, with the battle-light rising in
her eyes, “I will take Paris now or die!” She had to be carried away by
force, and this was done by Gaucourt and the Duke d'Alencon.

But her spirits were at the very top notch, now. She was brimming
with enthusiasm. She said she would be carried before the gate in the
morning, and in half an hour Paris would be ours without any question.
She could have kept her word. About this there was no doubt. But
she forgot one factor--the King, shadow of that substance named La
Tremouille. The King forbade the attempt!

You see, a new Embassy had just come from the Duke of Burgundy, and
another sham private trade of some sort was on foot.

You would know, without my telling you, that Joan's heart was nearly
broken. Because of the pain of her wound and the pain at her heart she
slept little that night. Several times the watchers heard muffled
sobs from the dark room where she lay at St. Denis, and many times the
grieving words, “It could have been taken!--it could have been taken!”
 which were the only ones she said.

She dragged herself out of bed a day later with a new hope. D'Alencon
had thrown a bridge across the Seine near St. Denis. Might she not cross
by that and assault Paris at another point? But the King got wind of it
and broke the bridge down! And more--he declared the campaign ended!
And more still--he had made a new truce and a long one, in which he had
agreed to leave Paris unthreatened and unmolested, and go back to the
Loire whence he had come!

Joan of Arc, who had never been defeated by the enemy, was defeated by
her own King. She had said once that all she feared for her cause was
treachery. It had struck its first blow now. She hung up her white
armor in the royal basilica of St. Denis, and went and asked the King
to relieve her of her functions and let her go home. As usual, she was
wise. Grand combinations, far-reaching great military moves were at an
end, now; for the future, when the truce should end, the war would be
merely a war of random and idle skirmishes, apparently; work suitable
for subalterns, and not requiring the supervision of a sublime military
genius. But the King would not let her go. The truce did not embrace all
France; there were French strongholds to be watched and preserved; he
would need her. Really, you see, Tremouille wanted to keep her where he
could balk and hinder her.

Now came her Voices again. They said, “Remain at St. Denis.” There was
no explanation. They did not say why. That was the voice of God; it took
precedence of the command of the King; Joan resolved to stay. But that
filled La Tremouille with dread. She was too tremendous a force to be
left to herself; she would surely defeat all his plans. He beguiled the
King to use compulsion. Joan had to submit--because she was wounded and
helpless. In the Great Trial she said she was carried away against
her will; and that if she had not been wounded it could not have been
accomplished. Ah, she had a spirit, that slender girl! a spirit to brave
all earthly powers and defy them. We shall never know why the Voices
ordered her to stay. We only know this; that if she could have obeyed,
the history of France would not be as it now stands written in the
books. Yes, well we know that.

On the 13th of September the army, sad and spiritless, turned its
face toward the Loire, and marched--without music! Yes, one noted that
detail. It was a funeral march; that is what it was. A long, dreary
funeral march, with never a shout or a cheer; friends looking on in
tears, all the way, enemies laughing. We reached Gien at last--that
place whence we had set out on our splendid march toward Rheims
less than three months before, with flags flying, bands playing, the
victory-flush of Patay glowing in our faces, and the massed multitudes
shouting and praising and giving us godspeed. There was a dull rain
falling now, the day was dark, the heavens mourned, the spectators were
few, we had no welcome but the welcome of silence, and pity, and tears.

Then the King disbanded that noble army of heroes; it furled its flags,
it stored its arms: the disgrace of France was complete. La Tremouille
wore the victor's crown; Joan of Arc, the unconquerable, was conquered.





41 The Maid Will March No More

YES, IT was as I have said: Joan had Paris and France in her grip, and
the Hundred Years' War under her heel, and the King made her open her
fist and take away her foot.

Now followed about eight months of drifting about with the King and his
council, and his gay and showy and dancing and flirting and hawking and
frolicking and serenading and dissipating court--drifting from town to
town and from castle to castle--a life which was pleasant to us of the
personal staff, but not to Joan. However, she only saw it, she didn't
live it. The King did his sincerest best to make her happy, and showed a
most kind and constant anxiety in this matter.

All others had to go loaded with the chains of an exacting court
etiquette, but she was free, she was privileged. So that she paid
her duty to the King once a day and passed the pleasant word, nothing
further was required of her. Naturally, then, she made herself a hermit,
and grieved the weary days through in her own apartments, with her
thoughts and devotions for company, and the planning of now forever
unrealizable military combinations for entertainment. In fancy she moved
bodies of men from this and that and the other point, so calculating the
distances to be covered, the time required for each body, and the nature
of the country to be traversed, as to have them appear in sight of each
other on a given day or at a given hour and concentrate for battle.
It was her only game, her only relief from her burden of sorrow and
inaction. She played it hour after hour, as others play chess; and lost
herself in it, and so got repose for her mind and healing for her heart.

She never complained, of course. It was not her way. She was the sort
that endure in silence.

But--she was a caged eagle just the same, and pined for the free air and
the alpine heights and the fierce joys of the storm.

France was full of rovers--disbanded soldiers ready for anything that
might turn up. Several times, at intervals, when Joan's dull captivity
grew too heavy to bear, she was allowed to gather a troop of cavalry and
make a health-restoring dash against the enemy. These things were a bath
to her spirits.

It was like old times, there at Saint-Pierre-le-Moutier, to see her lead
assault after assault, be driven back again and again, but always rally
and charge anew, all in a blaze of eagerness and delight; till at last
the tempest of missiles rained so intolerably thick that old D'Aulon,
who was wounded, sounded the retreat (for the King had charged him on
his head to let no harm come to Joan); and away everybody rushed after
him--as he supposed; but when he turned and looked, there were we of
the staff still hammering away; wherefore he rode back and urged her to
come, saying she was mad to stay there with only a dozen men. Her eye
danced merrily, and she turned upon him crying out:

“A dozen men! name of God, I have fifty-thousand, and will never budge
till this place is taken!

“Sound the charge!”

Which he did, and over the walls we went, and the fortress was ours. Old
D'Aulon thought her mind was wandering; but all she meant was, that
she felt the might of fifty thousand men surging in her heart. It was a
fanciful expression; but, to my thinking, truer word was never said.

Then there was the affair near Lagny, where we charged the intrenched
Burgundians through the open field four times, the last time
victoriously; the best prize of it Franquet d'Arras, the free-booter and
pitiless scourge of the region roundabout.

Now and then other such affairs; and at last, away toward the end of
May, 1430, we were in the neighborhood of Compiegne, and Joan resolved
to go to the help of that place, which was being besieged by the Duke of
Burgundy.

I had been wounded lately, and was not able to ride without help; but
the good Dwarf took me on behind him, and I held on to him and was safe
enough. We started at midnight, in a sullen downpour of warm rain, and
went slowly and softly and in dead silence, for we had to slip through
the enemy's lines. We were challenged only once; we made no answer, but
held our breath and crept steadily and stealthily along, and got through
without any accident. About three or half past we reached Compiegne,
just as the gray dawn was breaking in the east.

Joan set to work at once, and concerted a plan with Guillaume de Flavy,
captain of the city--a plan for a sortie toward evening against the
enemy, who was posted in three bodies on the other side of the Oise, in
the level plain. From our side one of the city gates communicated with
a bridge. The end of this bridge was defended on the other side of the
river by one of those fortresses called a boulevard; and this boulevard
also commanded a raised road, which stretched from its front across the
plain to the village of Marguy. A force of Burgundians occupied Marguy;
another was camped at Clairoix, a couple of miles above the raised road;
and a body of English was holding Venette, a mile and a half below it. A
kind of bow-and-arrow arrangement, you see; the causeway the arrow, the
boulevard at the feather-end of it, Marguy at the barb, Venette at one
end of the bow, Clairoix at the other.

Joan's plan was to go straight per causeway against Marguy, carry it by
assault, then turn swiftly upon Clairoix, up to the right, and capture
that camp in the same way, then face to the rear and be ready for heavy
work, for the Duke of Burgundy lay behind Clairoix with a reserve.
Flavy's lieutenant, with archers and the artillery of the boulevard,
was to keep the English troops from coming up from below and seizing the
causeway and cutting off Joan's retreat in case she should have to
make one. Also, a fleet of covered boats was to be stationed near
the boulevard as an additional help in case a retreat should become
necessary.

It was the 24th of May. At four in the afternoon Joan moved out at the
head of six hundred cavalry--on her last march in this life!

It breaks my heart. I had got myself helped up onto the walls, and from
there I saw much that happened, the rest was told me long afterward by
our two knights and other eye-witnesses. Joan crossed the bridge, and
soon left the boulevard behind her and went skimming away over the
raised road with her horsemen clattering at her heels. She had on a
brilliant silver-gilt cape over her armor, and I could see it flap and
flare and rise and fall like a little patch of white flame.

It was a bright day, and one could see far and wide over that plain.
Soon we saw the English force advancing, swiftly and in handsome order,
the sunlight flashing from its arms.

Joan crashed into the Burgundians at Marguy and was repulsed. Then she
saw the other Burgundians moving down from Clairoix. Joan rallied her
men and charged again, and was again rolled back. Two assaults occupy
a good deal of time--and time was precious here. The English were
approaching the road now from Venette, but the boulevard opened fire on
them and they were checked. Joan heartened her men with inspiring words
and led them to the charge again in great style. This time she carried
Marguy with a hurrah. Then she turned at once to the right and plunged
into the plan and struck the Clairoix force, which was just arriving;
then there was heavy work, and plenty of it, the two armies hurling each
other backward turn about and about, and victory inclining first to the
one, then to the other. Now all of a sudden there was a panic on our
side. Some say one thing caused it, some another. Some say the cannonade
made our front ranks think retreat was being cut off by the English,
some say the rear ranks got the idea that Joan was killed. Anyway our
men broke, and went flying in a wild rout for the causeway. Joan tried
to rally them and face them around, crying to them that victory was
sure, but it did no good, they divided and swept by her like a wave. Old
D'Aulon begged her to retreat while there was yet a chance for safety,
but she refused; so he seized her horse's bridle and bore her along with
the wreck and ruin in spite of herself. And so along the causeway they
came swarming, that wild confusion of frenzied men and horses--and the
artillery had to stop firing, of course; consequently the English and
Burgundians closed in in safety, the former in front, the latter behind
their prey. Clear to the boulevard the French were washed in this
enveloping inundation; and there, cornered in an angle formed by the
flank of the boulevard and the slope of the causeway, they bravely
fought a hopeless fight, and sank down one by one.

Flavy, watching from the city wall, ordered the gate to be closed and
the drawbridge raised. This shut Joan out.

The little personal guard around her thinned swiftly. Both of our good
knights went down disabled; Joan's two brothers fell wounded; then Noel
Rainguesson--all wounded while loyally sheltering Joan from blows aimed
at her. When only the Dwarf and the Paladin were left, they would not
give up, but stood their ground stoutly, a pair of steel towers streaked
and splashed with blood; and where the ax of one fell, and the sword of
the other, an enemy gasped and died.

And so fighting, and loyal to their duty to the last, good simple souls,
they came to their honorable end. Peace to their memories! they were
very dear to me.

Then there was a cheer and a rush, and Joan, still defiant, still laying
about her with her sword, was seized by her cape and dragged from her
horse. She was borne away a prisoner to the Duke of Burgundy's camp, and
after her followed the victorious army roaring its joy.

The awful news started instantly on its round; from lip to lip it flew;
and wherever it came it struck the people as with a sort of paralysis;
and they murmured over and over again, as if they were talking to
themselves, or in their sleep, “The Maid of Orleans taken!... Joan of
Arc a prisoner!... the savior of France lost to us!”--and would keep
saying that over, as if they couldn't understand how it could be, or how
God could permit it, poor creatures!

You know what a city is like when it is hung from eaves to pavement
with rustling black? Then you know what Rouse was like, and some other
cities. But can any man tell you what the mourning in the hearts of the
peasantry of France was like? No, nobody can tell you that, and,
poor dumb things, they could not have told you themselves, but it was
there--indeed, yes. Why, it was the spirit of a whole nation hung with
crape!

The 24th of May. We will draw down the curtain now upon the most
strange, and pathetic, and wonderful military drama that has been played
upon the stage of the world. Joan of Arc will march no more.





BOOK III TRIAL AND MARTYRDOM



1 The Maid in Chains

I CANNOT bear to dwell at great length upon the shameful history of
the summer and winter following the capture. For a while I was not much
troubled, for I was expecting every day to hear that Joan had been put
to ransom, and that the King--no, not the King, but grateful France--had
come eagerly forward to pay it. By the laws of war she could not
be denied the privilege of ransom. She was not a rebel; she was a
legitimately constituted soldier, head of the armies of France by
her King's appointment, and guilty of no crime known to military law;
therefore she could not be detained upon any pretext, if ransom were
proffered.

But day after day dragged by and no ransom was offered! It seems
incredible, but it is true. Was that reptile Tremouille busy at the
King's ear? All we know is, that the King was silent, and made no offer
and no effort in behalf of this poor girl who had done so much for him.

But, unhappily, there was alacrity enough in another quarter. The news
of the capture reached Paris the day after it happened, and the glad
English and Burgundians deafened the world all the day and all the night
with the clamor of their joy-bells and the thankful thunder of their
artillery, and the next day the Vicar-General of the Inquisition sent a
message to the Duke of Burgundy requiring the delivery of the prisoner
into the hands of the Church to be tried as an idolater.

The English had seen their opportunity, and it was the English power
that was really acting, not the Church. The Church was being used as a
blind, a disguise; and for a forcible reason: the Church was not only
able to take the life of Joan of Arc, but to blight her influence and
the valor-breeding inspiration of her name, whereas the English
power could but kill her body; that would not diminish or destroy the
influence of her name; it would magnify it and make it permanent. Joan
of Arc was the only power in France that the English did not despise,
the only power in France that they considered formidable. If the Church
could be brought to take her life, or to proclaim her an idolater, a
heretic, a witch, sent from Satan, not from heaven, it was believed that
the English supremacy could be at once reinstated.

The Duke of Burgundy listened--but waited. He could not doubt that the
French King or the French people would come forward presently and pay a
higher price than the English. He kept Joan a close prisoner in a
strong fortress, and continued to wait, week after week. He was a French
prince, and was at heart ashamed to sell her to the English. Yet with
all his waiting no offer came to him from the French side.

One day Joan played a cunning trick on her jailer, and not only slipped
out of her prison, but locked him up in it. But as she fled away she was
seen by a sentinel, and was caught and brought back.

Then she was sent to Beaurevoir, a stronger castle. This was early in
August, and she had been in captivity more than two months now. Here she
was shut up in the top of a tower which was sixty feet high. She ate her
heart there for another long stretch--about three months and a half.
And she was aware, all these weary five months of captivity, that the
English, under cover of the Church, were dickering for her as one would
dicker for a horse or a slave, and that France was silent, the King
silent, all her friends the same. Yes, it was pitiful.

And yet when she heard at last that Compiegne was being closely besieged
and likely to be captured, and that the enemy had declared that no
inhabitant of it should escape massacre, not even children of seven
years of age, she was in a fever at once to fly to our rescue. So she
tore her bedclothes to strips and tied them together and descended
this frail rope in the night, and it broke, and she fell and was badly
bruised, and remained three days insensible, meantime neither eating nor
drinking.

And now came relief to us, led by the Count of Vendome, and Compiegne
was saved and the siege raised. This was a disaster to the Duke of
Burgundy. He had to save money now. It was a good time for a new bid to
be made for Joan of Arc. The English at once sent a French bishop--that
forever infamous Pierre Cauchon of Beauvais. He was partly promised
the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was vacant, if he should succeed. He
claimed the right to preside over Joan's ecclesiastical trial because
the battle-ground where she was taken was within his diocese. By the
military usage of the time the ransom of a royal prince was 10,000
livres of gold, which is 61,125 francs--a fixed sum, you see. It must be
accepted when offered; it could not be refused.

Cauchon brought the offer of this very sum from the English--a royal
prince's ransom for the poor little peasant-girl of Domremy. It shows
in a striking way the English idea of her formidable importance. It was
accepted. For that sum Joan of Arc, the Savior of France, was sold; sold
to her enemies; to the enemies of her country; enemies who had lashed
and thrashed and thumped and trounced France for a century and made
holiday sport of it; enemies who had forgotten, years and years ago,
what a Frenchman's face was like, so used were they to seeing nothing
but his back; enemies whom she had whipped, whom she had cowed, whom she
had taught to respect French valor, new-born in her nation by the breath
of her spirit; enemies who hungered for her life as being the only
puissance able to stand between English triumph and French degradation.
Sold to a French priest by a French prince, with the French King and the
French nation standing thankless by and saying nothing.

And she--what did she say? Nothing. Not a reproach passed her lips. She
was too great for that--she was Joan of Arc; and when that is said, all
is said.

As a soldier, her record was spotless. She could not be called to
account for anything under that head. A subterfuge must be found, and,
as we have seen, was found. She must be tried by priests for crimes
against religion. If none could be discovered, some must be invented.
Let the miscreant Cauchon alone to contrive those.

Rouen was chosen as the scene of the trial. It was in the heart of the
English power; its population had been under English dominion so many
generations that they were hardly French now, save in language. The
place was strongly garrisoned. Joan was taken there near the end of
December, 1430, and flung into a dungeon. Yes, and clothed in chains,
that free spirit!

Still France made no move. How do I account for this? I think there is
only one way. You will remember that whenever Joan was not at the front,
the French held back and ventured nothing; that whenever she led, they
swept everything before them, so long as they could see her white
armor or her banner; that every time she fell wounded or was reported
killed--as at Compiegne--they broke in panic and fled like sheep. I
argue from this that they had undergone no real transformation as yet;
that at bottom they were still under the spell of a timorousness born of
generations of unsuccess, and a lack of confidence in each other and
in their leaders born of old and bitter experience in the way of
treacheries of all sorts--for their kings had been treacherous to their
great vassals and to their generals, and these in turn were treacherous
to the head of the state and to each other. The soldiery found that
they could depend utterly on Joan, and upon her alone. With her gone,
everything was gone. She was the sun that melted the frozen torrents and
set them boiling; with that sun removed, they froze again, and the army
and all France became what they had been before, mere dead corpses--that
and nothing more; incapable of thought, hope, ambition, or motion.





2 Joan Sold to the English

MY WOUND gave me a great deal of trouble clear into the first part of
October; then the fresher weather renewed my life and strength. All this
time there were reports drifting about that the King was going to ransom
Joan. I believed these, for I was young and had not yet found out the
littleness and meanness of our poor human race, which brags about itself
so much, and thinks it is better and higher than the other animals.

In October I was well enough to go out with two sorties, and in the
second one, on the 23d, I was wounded again. My luck had turned,
you see. On the night of the 25th the besiegers decamped, and in the
disorder and confusion one of their prisoners escaped and got safe into
Compiegne, and hobbled into my room as pallid and pathetic an object as
you would wish to see.

“What? Alive? Noel Rainguesson!”

It was indeed he. It was a most joyful meeting, that you will easily
know; and also as sad as it was joyful. We could not speak Joan's name.
One's voice would have broken down. We knew who was meant when she was
mentioned; we could say “she” and “her,” but we could not speak the
name.

We talked of the personal staff. Old D'Aulon, wounded and a prisoner,
was still with Joan and serving her, by permission of the Duke of
Burgundy. Joan was being treated with respect due to her rank and to her
character as a prisoner of war taken in honorable conflict. And this was
continued--as we learned later--until she fell into the hands of that
bastard of Satan, Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais.

Noel was full of noble and affectionate praises and appreciations of our
old boastful big Standard-Bearer, now gone silent forever, his real and
imaginary battles all fought, his work done, his life honorably closed
and completed.

“And think of his luck!” burst out Noel, with his eyes full of tears.
“Always the pet child of luck!

“See how it followed him and stayed by him, from his first step all
through, in the field or out of it; always a splendid figure in the
public eye, courted and envied everywhere; always having a chance to do
fine things and always doing them; in the beginning called the Paladin
in joke, and called it afterward in earnest because he magnificently
made the title good; and at last--supremest luck of all--died in the
field! died with his harness on; died faithful to his charge, the
Standard in his hand; died--oh, think of it--with the approving eye of
Joan of Arc upon him!

“He drained the cup of glory to the last drop, and went jubilant to his
peace, blessedly spared all part in the disaster which was to follow.
What luck, what luck! And we? What was our sin that we are still here,
we who have also earned our place with the happy dead?”

And presently he said:

“They tore the sacred Standard from his dead hand and carried it away,
their most precious prize after its captured owner. But they haven't it
now. A month ago we put our lives upon the risk--our two good knights,
my fellow-prisoners, and I--and stole it, and got it smuggled by
trusty hands to Orleans, and there it is now, safe for all time in the
Treasury.”

I was glad and grateful to learn that. I have seen it often since, when
I have gone to Orleans on the 8th of May to be the petted old guest of
the city and hold the first place of honor at the banquets and in the
processions--I mean since Joan's brothers passed from this life. It will
still be there, sacredly guarded by French love, a thousand years from
now--yes, as long as any shred of it hangs together. (1) Two or three
weeks after this talk came the tremendous news like a thunder-clap, and
we were aghast--Joan of Arc sold to the English!

Not for a moment had we ever dreamed of such a thing. We were young, you
see, and did not know the human race, as I have said before. We had been
so proud of our country, so sure of her nobleness, her magnanimity,
her gratitude. We had expected little of the King, but of France we
had expected everything. Everybody knew that in various towns patriot
priests had been marching in procession urging the people to sacrifice
money, property, everything, and buy the freedom of their heaven-sent
deliverer. That the money would be raised we had not thought of
doubting.

But it was all over now, all over. It was a bitter time for us. The
heavens seemed hung with black; all cheer went out from our hearts.
Was this comrade here at my bedside really Noel Rainguesson, that
light-hearted creature whose whole life was but one long joke, and who
used up more breath in laughter than in keeping his body alive? No, no;
that Noel I was to see no more. This one's heart was broken. He moved
grieving about, and absently, like one in a dream; the stream of his
laughter was dried at its source.

Well, that was best. It was my own mood. We were company for each other.
He nursed me patiently through the dull long weeks, and at last, in
January, I was strong enough to go about again. Then he said:

“Shall we go now?”

“Yes.”

There was no need to explain. Our hearts were in Rouen; we would carry
our bodies there. All that we cared for in this life was shut up in that
fortress. We could not help her, but it would be some solace to us to be
near her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and look daily upon the
stone walls that hid her. What if we should be made prisoners there?
Well, we could but do our best, and let luck and fate decide what should
happen.

And so we started. We could not realize the change which had come upon
the country. We seemed able to choose our own route and go whenever we
pleased, unchallenged and unmolested. When Joan of Arc was in the field
there was a sort of panic of fear everywhere; but now that she was out
of the way, fear had vanished. Nobody was troubled about you or afraid
of you, nobody was curious about you or your business, everybody was
indifferent.

We presently saw that we could take to the Seine, and not weary
ourselves out with land travel.

So we did it, and were carried in a boat to within a league of Rouen.
Then we got ashore; not on the hilly side, but on the other, where it
is as level as a floor. Nobody could enter or leave the city without
explaining himself. It was because they feared attempts at a rescue of
Joan.

We had no trouble. We stopped in the plain with a family of peasants and
stayed a week, helping them with their work for board and lodging, and
making friends of them. We got clothes like theirs, and wore them.
When we had worked our way through their reserves and gotten their
confidence, we found that they secretly harbored French hearts in their
bodies. Then we came out frankly and told them everything, and found
them ready to do anything they could to help us.

Our plan was soon made, and was quite simple. It was to help them drive
a flock of sheep to the market of the city. One morning early we made
the venture in a melancholy drizzle of rain, and passed through the
frowning gates unmolested. Our friends had friends living over a humble
wine shop in a quaint tall building situated in one of the narrow lanes
that run down from the cathedral to the river, and with these they
bestowed us; and the next day they smuggled our own proper clothing and
other belongings to us. The family that lodged us--the Pieroons--were
French in sympathy, and we needed to have no secrets from them.

(1) It remained there three hundred and sixty years, and then was
destroyed in a public bonfire, together with two swords, a plumed cap,
several suits of state apparel, and other relics of the Maid, by a mob
in the time of the Revolution. Nothing which the hand of Joan of Arc is
known to have touched now remains in existence except a few preciously
guarded military and state papers which she signed, her pen being guided
by a clerk or her secretary, Louis de Conte. A boulder exists from which
she is known to have mounted her horse when she was once setting out
upon a campaign. Up to a quarter of a century ago there was a single
hair from her head still in existence. It was drawn through the wax of
a seal attached to the parchment of a state document. It was
surreptitiously snipped out, seal and all, by some vandal relic-hunter,
and carried off. Doubtless it still exists, but only the thief knows
where. -- TRANSLATOR.





3 Weaving the Net About Her

IT WAS necessary for me to have some way to gain bread for Noel and
myself; and when the Pierrons found that I knew how to write, the
applied to their confessor in my behalf, and he got a place for me with
a good priest named Manchon, who was to be the chief recorder in the
Great Trial of Joan of Arc now approaching. It was a strange position
for me--clerk to the recorder--and dangerous if my sympathies and the
late employment should be found out. But there was not much danger.
Manchon was at bottom friendly to Joan and would not betray me; and
my name would not, for I had discarded my surname and retained only my
given one, like a person of low degree.

I attended Manchon constantly straight along, out of January and into
February, and was often in the citadel with him--in the very fortress
where Joan was imprisoned, though not in the dungeon where she was
confined, and so did not see her, of course.

Manchon told me everything that had been happening before my coming.
Ever since the purchase of Joan, Cauchon had been busy packing his jury
for the destruction of the Maid--weeks and weeks he had spent in this
bad industry. The University of Paris had sent him a number of learned
and able and trusty ecclesiastics of the stripe he wanted; and he had
scraped together a clergyman of like stripe and great fame here and
there and yonder, until he was able to construct a formidable court
numbering half a hundred distinguished names. French names they were,
but their interests and sympathies were English.

A great officer of the Inquisition was also sent from Paris for the
accused must be tried by the forms of the Inquisition; but this was a
brave and righteous man, and he said squarely that this court had no
power to try the case, wherefore he refused to act; and the same honest
talk was uttered by two or three others.

The Inquisitor was right. The case as here resurrected against Joan had
already been tried long ago at Poitiers, and decided in her favor. Yes,
and by a higher tribunal than this one, for at the head of it was an
Archbishop--he of Rheims--Cauchon's own metropolitan. So here, you see,
a lower court was impudently preparing to try and redecide a cause which
had already been decided by its superior, a court of higher authority.
Imagine it! No, the case could not properly be tried again. Cauchon
could not properly preside in this new court, for more than one reason:

Rouen was not in his diocese; Joan had not been arrested in her
domicile, which was still Domremy; and finally this proposed judge was
the prisoner's outspoken enemy, and therefore he was incompetent to
try her. Yet all these large difficulties were gotten rid of. The
territorial Chapter of Rouen finally granted territorial letters to
Cauchon--though only after a struggle and under compulsion. Force was
also applied to the Inquisitor, and he was obliged to submit.

So then, the little English King, by his representative, formally
delivered Joan into the hands of the court, but with this reservation:
if the court failed to condemn her, he was to have her back again! Ah,
dear, what chance was there for that forsaken and friendless child?
Friendless, indeed--it is the right word. For she was in a black
dungeon, with half a dozen brutal common soldiers keeping guard night
and day in the room where her cage was--for she was in a cage; an iron
cage, and chained to her bed by neck and hands and feet. Never a person
near her whom she had ever seen before; never a woman at all. Yes, this
was, indeed, friendlessness.

Now it was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg who captured Joan and
Compiegne, and it was Jean who sold her to the Duke of Burgundy. Yet
this very De Luxembourg was shameless enough to go and show his face to
Joan in her cage. He came with two English earls, Warwick and Stafford.
He was a poor reptile. He told her he would get her set free if she
would promise not to fight the English any more. She had been in that
cage a long time now, but not long enough to break her spirit. She
retorted scornfully:

“Name of God, you but mock me. I know that you have neither the power
nor the will to do it.”

He insisted. Then the pride and dignity of the soldier rose in Joan, and
she lifted her chained hands and let them fall with a clash, saying:

“See these! They know more than you, and can prophesy better. I know
that the English are going to kill me, for they think that when I am
dead they can get the Kingdom of France. It is not so.

“Though there were a hundred thousand of them they would never get it.”

This defiance infuriated Stafford, and he--now think of it--he a free,
strong man, she a chained and helpless girl--he drew his dagger and
flung himself at her to stab her. But Warwick seized him and held him
back. Warwick was wise. Take her life in that way? Send her to Heaven
stainless and undisgraced? It would make her the idol of France, and the
whole nation would rise and march to victory and emancipation under the
inspiration of her spirit. No, she must be saved for another fate than
that.

Well, the time was approaching for the Great Trial. For more than two
months Cauchon had been raking and scraping everywhere for any odds and
ends of evidence or suspicion or conjecture that might be usable against
Joan, and carefully suppressing all evidence that came to hand in her
favor. He had limitless ways and means and powers at his disposal for
preparing and strengthening the case for the prosecution, and he used
them all.

But Joan had no one to prepare her case for her, and she was shut up in
those stone walls and had no friend to appeal to for help. And as for
witnesses, she could not call a single one in her defense; they were
all far away, under the French flag, and this was an English court; they
would have been seized and hanged if they had shown their faces at the
gates of Rouen. No, the prisoner must be the sole witness--witness for
the prosecution, witness for the defense; and with a verdict of death
resolved upon before the doors were opened for the court's first
sitting.

When she learned that the court was made up of ecclesiastics in the
interest of the English, she begged that in fairness an equal number of
priests of the French party should be added to these.

Cauchon scoffed at her message, and would not even deign to answer it.

By the law of the Church--she being a minor under twenty-one--it was her
right to have counsel to conduct her case, advise her how to answer
when questioned, and protect her from falling into traps set by cunning
devices of the prosecution. She probably did not know that this was her
right, and that she could demand it and require it, for there was none
to tell her that; but she begged for this help, at any rate. Cauchon
refused it. She urged and implored, pleading her youth and her ignorance
of the complexities and intricacies of the law and of legal procedure.
Cauchon refused again, and said she must get along with her case as best
she might by herself. Ah, his heart was a stone.

Cauchon prepared the proces verbal. I will simplify that by calling it
the Bill of Particulars. It was a detailed list of the charges against
her, and formed the basis of the trial. Charges? It was a list of
suspicions and public rumors--those were the words used. It was merely
charged that she was suspected of having been guilty of heresies,
witchcraft, and other such offenses against religion.

Now by the law of the Church, a trial of that sort could not be begun
until a searching inquiry had been made into the history and character
of the accused, and it was essential that the result of this inquiry be
added to the proces verbal and form a part of it. You remember that that
was the first thing they did before the trial at Poitiers. They did it
again now. An ecclesiastic was sent to Domremy. There and all about
the neighborhood he made an exhaustive search into Joan's history
and character, and came back with his verdict. It was very clear. The
searcher reported that he found Joan's character to be in every way what
he “would like his own sister's character to be.” Just about the
same report that was brought back to Poitiers, you see. Joan's was a
character which could endure the minutest examination.

This verdict was a strong point for Joan, you will say. Yes, it would
have been if it could have seen the light; but Cauchon was awake, and it
disappeared from the proces verbal before the trial. People were prudent
enough not to inquire what became of it.

One would imagine that Cauchon was ready to begin the trial by this
time. But no, he devised one more scheme for poor Joan's destruction,
and it promised to be a deadly one.

One of the great personages picked out and sent down by the University
of Paris was an ecclesiastic named Nicolas Loyseleur. He was tall,
handsome, grave, of smooth, soft speech and courteous and winning
manners. There was no seeming of treachery or hypocrisy about him,
yet he was full of both. He was admitted to Joan's prison by night,
disguised as a cobbler; he pretended to be from her own country; he
professed to be secretly a patriot; he revealed the fact that he was
a priest. She was filled with gladness to see one from the hills and
plains that were so dear to her; happier still to look upon a priest and
disburden her heart in confession, for the offices of the Church were
the bread of life, the breath of her nostrils to her, and she had been
long forced to pine for them in vain. She opened her whole innocent
heart to this creature, and in return he gave her advice concerning her
trial which could have destroyed her if her deep native wisdom had not
protected her against following it.

You will ask, what value could this scheme have, since the secrets of
the confessional are sacred and cannot be revealed? True--but suppose
another person should overhear them? That person is not bound to keep
the secret. Well, that is what happened. Cauchon had previously caused
a hole to be bored through the wall; and he stood with his ear to that
hole and heard all. It is pitiful to think of these things. One wonders
how they could treat that poor child so. She had not done them any harm.





4 All Ready to Condemn

ON TUESDAY, the 20th of February, while I sat at my master's work in the
evening, he came in, looking sad, and said it had been decided to begin
the trial at eight o'clock the next morning, and I must get ready to
assist him.

Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no
matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling
like a leaf. I suppose that without knowing it I had been half imagining
that at the last moment something would happen, something that would
stop this fatal trial; maybe that La Hire would burst in at the gates
with his hellions at his back; maybe that God would have pity and
stretch forth His mighty hand. But now--now there was no hope.

The trial was to begin in the chapel of the fortress and would be
public. So I went sorrowing away and told Noel, so that he might be
there early and secure a place. It would give him a chance to look again
upon the face which we so revered and which was so precious to us.
All the way, both going and coming, I plowed through chattering and
rejoicing multitudes of English soldiery and English-hearted French
citizens. There was no talk but of the coming event. Many times I heard
the remark, accompanied by a pitiless laugh:

“The fat Bishop has got things as he wants them at last, and says he
will lead the vile witch a merry dance and a short one.”

But here and there I glimpsed compassion and distress in a face, and
it was not always a French one. English soldiers feared Joan, but they
admired her for her great deeds and her unconquerable spirit.

In the morning Manchon and I went early, yet as we approached the
vast fortress we found crowds of men already there and still others
gathering. The chapel was already full and the way barred against
further admissions of unofficial persons. We took our appointed places.
Throned on high sat the president, Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, in
his grand robes, and before him in rows sat his robed court--fifty
distinguished ecclesiastics, men of high degree in the Church, of
clear-cut intellectual faces, men of deep learning, veteran adepts in
strategy and casuistry, practised setters of traps for ignorant minds
and unwary feet. When I looked around upon this army of masters of
legal fence, gathered here to find just one verdict and no other,
and remembered that Joan must fight for her good name and her life
single-handed against them, I asked myself what chance an ignorant poor
country-girl of nineteen could have in such an unequal conflict; and
my heart sank down low, very low. When I looked again at that obese
president, puffing and wheezing there, his great belly distending and
receding with each breath, and noted his three chins, fold above fold,
and his knobby and knotty face, and his purple and splotchy complexion,
and his repulsive cauliflower nose, and his cold and malignant eyes--a
brute, every detail of him--my heart sank lower still. And when I noted
that all were afraid of this man, and shrank and fidgeted in their seats
when his eye smote theirs, my last poor ray of hope dissolved away and
wholly disappeared.

There was one unoccupied seat in this place, and only one. It was over
against the wall, in view of every one. It was a little wooden bench
without a back, and it stood apart and solitary on a sort of dais. Tall
men-at-arms in morion, breastplate, and steel gauntlets stood as stiff
as their own halberds on each side of this dais, but no other creature
was near by it. A pathetic little bench to me it was, for I knew whom it
was for; and the sight of it carried my mind back to the great court at
Poitiers, where Joan sat upon one like it and calmly fought her cunning
fight with the astonished doctors of the Church and Parliament, and
rose from it victorious and applauded by all, and went forth to fill the
world with the glory of her name.

What a dainty little figure she was, and how gentle and innocent, how
winning and beautiful in the fresh bloom of her seventeen years! Those
were grand days. And so recent--for she was just nineteen now--and how
much she had seen since, and what wonders she had accomplished!

But now--oh, all was changed now. She had been languishing in dungeons,
away from light and air and the cheer of friendly faces, for nearly
three-quarters of a year--she, born child of the sun, natural comrade of
the birds and of all happy free creatures. She would be weary now, and
worn with this long captivity, her forces impaired; despondent, perhaps,
as knowing there was no hope. Yes, all was changed.

All this time there had been a muffled hum of conversation, and rustling
of robes and scraping of feet on the floor, a combination of dull noises
which filled all the place. Suddenly:

“Produce the accused!”

It made me catch my breath. My heart began to thump like a hammer. But
there was silence now--silence absolute. All those noises ceased, and
it was as if they had never been. Not a sound; the stillness grew
oppressive; it was like a weight upon one. All faces were turned toward
the door; and one could properly expect that, for most of the people
there suddenly realized, no doubt, that they were about to see, in
actual flesh and blood, what had been to them before only an embodied
prodigy, a word, a phrase, a world-girdling Name.

The stillness continued. Then, far down the stone-paved corridors, one
heard a vague slow sound approaching: clank... clink... clank--Joan of
Arc, Deliverer of France, in chains!

My head swam; all things whirled and spun about me. Ah, I was realizing,
too.





5 Fifty Experts Against a Novice

I GIVE you my honor now that I am not going to distort or discolor the
facts of this miserable trial. No, I will give them to you honestly,
detail by detail, just as Manchon and I set them down daily in the
official record of the court, and just as one may read them in the
printed histories.

There will be only this difference: that in talking familiarly with you,
I shall use my right to comment upon the proceedings and explain them as
I go along, so that you can understand them better; also, I shall throw
in trifles which came under our eyes and have a certain interest for you
and me, but were not important enough to go into the official record.
(1) To take up my story now where I left off. We heard the clanking of
Joan's chains down the corridors; she was approaching.

Presently she appeared; a thrill swept the house, and one heard deep
breaths drawn. Two guardsmen followed her at a short distance to the
rear. Her head was bowed a little, and she moved slowly, she being weak
and her irons heavy. She had on men's attire--all black; a soft woolen
stuff, intensely black, funereally black, not a speck of relieving color
in it from her throat to the floor. A wide collar of this same black
stuff lay in radiating folds upon her shoulders and breast; the sleeves
of her doublet were full, down to the elbows, and tight thence to her
manacled wrists; below the doublet, tight black hose down to the chains
on her ankles.

Half-way to her bench she stopped, just where a wide shaft of light fell
slanting from a window, and slowly lifted her face. Another thrill!--it
was totally colorless, white as snow; a face of gleaming snow set in
vivid contrast upon that slender statue of somber unmitigated black. It
was smooth and pure and girlish, beautiful beyond belief, infinitely
sad and sweet. But, dear, dear! when the challenge of those untamed
eyes fell upon that judge, and the droop vanished from her form and
it straightened up soldierly and noble, my heart leaped for joy; and I
said, all is well, all is well--they have not broken her, they have not
conquered her, she is Joan of Arc still! Yes, it was plain to me now
that there was one spirit there which this dreaded judge could not quell
nor make afraid.

She moved to her place and mounted the dais and seated herself upon her
bench, gathering her chains into her lap and nestling her little white
hands there. Then she waited in tranquil dignity, the only person there
who seemed unmoved and unexcited. A bronzed and brawny English soldier,
standing at martial ease in the front rank of the citizen spectators,
did now most gallantly and respectfully put up his great hand and give
her the military salute; and she, smiling friendly, put up hers and
returned it; whereat there was a sympathetic little break of applause,
which the judge sternly silence.

Now the memorable inquisition called in history the Great Trial began.
Fifty experts against a novice, and no one to help the novice!

The judge summarized the circumstances of the case and the public
reports and suspicions upon which it was based; then he required Joan to
kneel and make oath that she would answer with exact truthfulness to all
questions asked her.

Joan's mind was not asleep. It suspected that dangerous possibilities
might lie hidden under this apparently fair and reasonable demand.
She answered with the simplicity which so often spoiled the enemy's
best-laid plans in the trial at Poitiers, and said:

“No; for I do not know what you are going to ask me; you might ask of me
things which I would not tell you.”

This incensed the Court, and brought out a brisk flurry of angry
exclamations. Joan was not disturbed. Cauchon raised his voice and began
to speak in the midst of this noise, but he was so angry that he could
hardly get his words out. He said:

“With the divine assistance of our Lord we require you to expedite these
proceedings for the welfare of your conscience. Swear, with your hands
upon the Gospels, that you will answer true to the questions which shall
be asked you!” and he brought down his fat hand with a crash upon his
official table.

Joan said, with composure:

“As concerning my father and mother, and the faith, and what things
I have done since my coming into France, I will gladly answer; but as
regards the revelations which I have received from God, my Voices have
forbidden me to confide them to any save my King--”

Here there was another angry outburst of threats and expletives, and
much movement and confusion; so she had to stop, and wait for the noise
to subside; then her waxen face flushed a little and she straightened
up and fixed her eye on the judge, and finished her sentence in a voice
that had the old ring to it:

--“and I will never reveal these things though you cut my head off!”

Well, maybe you know what a deliberative body of Frenchmen is like. The
judge and half the court were on their feet in a moment, and all shaking
their fists at the prisoner, and all storming and vituperating at once,
so that you could hardly hear yourself think. They kept this up several
minutes; and because Joan sat untroubled and indifferent they grew
madder and noisier all the time. Once she said, with a fleeting trace of
the old-time mischief in her eye and manner:

“Prithee, speak one at a time, fair lords, then I will answer all of
you.”

At the end of three whole hours of furious debating over the oath,
the situation had not changed a jot. The Bishop was still requiring an
unmodified oath, Joan was refusing for the twentieth time to take any
except the one which she had herself proposed. There was a physical
change apparent, but it was confined to the court and judge; they
were hoarse, droopy, exhausted by their long frenzy, and had a sort of
haggard look in their faces, poor men, whereas Joan was still placid and
reposeful and did not seem noticeably tired.

The noise quieted down; there was a waiting pause of some moments'
duration. Then the judge surrendered to the prisoner, and with
bitterness in his voice told her to take the oath after her own fashion.
Joan sunk at once to her knees; and as she laid her hands upon the
Gospels, that big English soldier set free his mind:

“By God, if she were but English, she were not in this place another
half a second!”

It was the soldier in him responding to the soldier in her. But what
a stinging rebuke it was, what an arraignment of French character and
French royalty! Would that he could have uttered just that one phrase
in the hearing of Orleans! I know that that grateful city, that adoring
city, would have risen to the last man and the last woman, and marched
upon Rouen. Some speeches--speeches that shame a man and humble
him--burn themselves into the memory and remain there. That one is
burned into mine.

After Joan had made oath, Cauchon asked her her name, and where she was
born, and some questions about her family; also what her age was. She
answered these. Then he asked her how much education she had.

“I have learned from my mother the Pater Noster, the Ave Maria, and the
Belief. All that I know was taught me by my mother.”

Questions of this unessential sort dribbled on for a considerable time.
Everybody was tired out by now, except Joan. The tribunal prepared to
rise. At this point Cauchon forbade Joan to try to escape from prison,
upon pain of being held guilty of the crime of heresy--singular logic!
She answered simply:

“I am not bound by this proposition. If I could escape I would not
reproach myself, for I have given no promise, and I shall not.”

Then she complained of the burden of her chains, and asked that they
might be removed, for she was strongly guarded in that dungeon and there
was no need of them. But the Bishop refused, and reminded her that she
had broken out of prison twice before. Joan of Arc was too proud to
insist. She only said, as she rose to go with the guard:

“It is true, I have wanted to escape, and I do want to escape.” Then she
added, in a way that would touch the pity of anybody, I think, “It is
the right of every prisoner.”

And so she went from the place in the midst of an impressive stillness,
which made the sharper and more distressful to me the clank of those
pathetic chains.

What presence of mind she had! One could never surprise her out of it.
She saw Noel and me there when she first took her seat on the bench,
and we flushed to the forehead with excitement and emotion, but her face
showed nothing, betrayed nothing. Her eyes sought us fifty times that
day, but they passed on and there was never any ray of recognition in
them. Another would have started upon seeing us, and then--why, then
there could have been trouble for us, of course.

We walked slowly home together, each busy with his own grief and saying
not a word.

(1) He kept his word. His account of the Great Trial will be found to
be in strict and detailed accordance with the sworn facts of history.
--TRANSLATOR.





6 The Maid Baffles Her Persecutors

THAT NIGHT Manchon told me that all through the day's proceedings
Cauchon had had some clerks concealed in the embrasure of a window who
were to make a special report garbling Joan's answers and twisting them
from their right meaning. Ah, that was surely the cruelest man and the
most shameless that has lived in this world. But his scheme failed.
Those clerks had human hearts in them, and their base work revolted
them, and they turned to and boldly made a straight report, whereupon
Cauchon cursed them and ordered them out of his presence with a threat
of drowning, which was his favorite and most frequent menace. The matter
had gotten abroad and was making great and unpleasant talk, and Cauchon
would not try to repeat this shabby game right away. It comforted me to
hear that.

When we arrived at the citadel next morning, we found that a change
had been made. The chapel had been found too small. The court had now
removed to a noble chamber situated at the end of the great hall of the
castle. The number of judges was increased to sixty-two--one ignorant
girl against such odds, and none to help her.

The prisoner was brought in. She was as white as ever, but she was
looking no whit worse than she looked when she had first appeared the
day before. Isn't it a strange thing? Yesterday she had sat five hours
on that backless bench with her chains in her lap, baited, badgered,
persecuted by that unholy crew, without even the refreshment of a cup of
water--for she was never offered anything, and if I have made you know
her by this time you will know without my telling you that she was not a
person likely to ask favors of those people. And she had spent the night
caged in her wintry dungeon with her chains upon her; yet here she was,
as I say, collected, unworn, and ready for the conflict; yes, and
the only person there who showed no signs of the wear and worry of
yesterday. And her eyes--ah, you should have seen them and broken your
hearts. Have you seen that veiled deep glow, that pathetic hurt dignity,
that unsubdued and unsubduable spirit that burns and smolders in the eye
of a caged eagle and makes you feel mean and shabby under the burden of
its mute reproach? Her eyes were like that. How capable they were, and
how wonderful! Yes, at all times and in all circumstances they could
express as by print every shade of the wide range of her moods. In
them were hidden floods of gay sunshine, the softest and peacefulest
twilights, and devastating storms and lightnings. Not in this world have
there been others that were comparable to them. Such is my opinion, and
none that had the privilege to see them would say otherwise than this
which I have said concerning them.

The seance began. And how did it begin, should you think? Exactly as it
began before--with that same tedious thing which had been settled once,
after so much wrangling. The Bishop opened thus:

“You are required now, to take the oath pure and simple, to answer truly
all questions asked you.”

Joan replied placidly:

“I have made oath yesterday, my lord; let that suffice.”

The Bishop insisted and insisted, with rising temper; Joan but shook her
head and remained silent. At last she said:

“I made oath yesterday; it is sufficient.” Then she sighed and said, “Of
a truth, you do burden me too much.”

The Bishop still insisted, still commanded, but he could not move her.
At last he gave it up and turned her over for the day's inquest to an
old hand at tricks and traps and deceptive plausibilities--Beaupere, a
doctor of theology. Now notice the form of this sleek strategist's first
remark--flung out in an easy, offhand way that would have thrown any
unwatchful person off his guard:

“Now, Joan, the matter is very simple; just speak up and frankly and
truly answer the questions which I am going to ask you, as you have
sworn to do.”

It was a failure. Joan was not asleep. She saw the artifice. She said:

“No. You could ask me things which I could not tell you--and would not.”
 Then, reflecting upon how profane and out of character it was for these
ministers of God to be prying into matters which had proceeded from His
hands under the awful seal of His secrecy, she added, with a warning
note in her tone, “If you were well informed concerning me you would
wish me out of your hands. I have done nothing but by revelation.”

Beaupere changed his attack, and began an approach from another quarter.
He would slip upon her, you see, under cover of innocent and unimportant
questions.

“Did you learn any trade at home?”

“Yes, to sew and to spin.” Then the invincible soldier, victor of Patay,
conqueror of the lion Talbot, deliverer of Orleans, restorer of a king's
crown, commander-in-chief of a nation's armies, straightened
herself proudly up, gave her head a little toss, and said with naive
complacency, “And when it comes to that, I am not afraid to be matched
against any woman in Rouen!”

The crowd of spectators broke out with applause--which pleased Joan--and
there was many a friendly and petting smile to be seen. But Cauchon
stormed at the people and warned them to keep still and mind their
manners.

Beaupere asked other questions. Then:

“Had you other occupations at home?”

“Yes. I helped my mother in the household work and went to the pastures
with the sheep and the cattle.”

Her voice trembled a little, but one could hardly notice it. As for me,
it brought those old enchanted days flooding back to me, and I could not
see what I was writing for a little while.

Beaupere cautiously edged along up with other questions toward the
forbidden ground, and finally repeated a question which she had refused
to answer a little while back--as to whether she had received the
Eucharist in those days at other festivals than that of Easter. Joan
merely said:

“Passez outre.” Or, as one might say, “Pass on to matters which you are
privileged to pry into.”

I heard a member of the court say to a neighbor:

“As a rule, witnesses are but dull creatures, and an easy prey--yes, and
easily embarrassed, easily frightened--but truly one can neither scare
this child nor find her dozing.”

Presently the house pricked up its ears and began to listen eagerly,
for Beaupere began to touch upon Joan's Voices, a matter of consuming
interest and curiosity to everybody. His purpose was to trick her into
heedless sayings that could indicate that the Voices had sometimes given
her evil advice--hence that they had come from Satan, you see. To have
dealing with the devil--well, that would send her to the stake in brief
order, and that was the deliberate end and aim of this trial.

“When did you first hear these Voices?”

“I was thirteen when I first heard a Voice coming from God to help me to
live well. I was frightened. It came at midday, in my father's garden in
the summer.”

“Had you been fasting?”

“Yes.”

“The day before?”

“No.”

“From what direction did it come?”

“From the right--from toward the church.”

“Did it come with a bright light?”

“Oh, indeed yes. It was brilliant. When I came into France I often heard
the Voices very loud.”

“What did the Voice sound like?”

“It was a noble Voice, and I thought it was sent to me from God. The
third time I heard it I recognized it as being an angel's.”

“You could understand it?”

“Quite easily. It was always clear.”

“What advice did it give you as to the salvation of your soul?”

“It told me to live rightly, and be regular in attendance upon the
services of the Church. And it told me that I must go to France.”

“In what species of form did the Voice appear?”

Joan looked suspiciously at he priest a moment, then said, tranquilly:

“As to that, I will not tell you.”

“Did the Voice seek you often?”

“Yes. Twice or three times a week, saying, 'Leave your village and go to
France.'”

“Did you father know about your departure?”

“No. The Voice said, 'Go to France'; therefore I could not abide at home
any longer.”

“What else did it say?”

“That I should raise the siege of Orleans.”

“Was that all?”

“No, I was to go to Vaucouleurs, and Robert de Baudricourt would give
me soldiers to go with me to France; and I answered, saying that I was a
poor girl who did not know how to ride, neither how to fight.”

Then she told how she was balked and interrupted at Vaucouleurs, but
finally got her soldiers, and began her march.

“How were you dressed?”

The court of Poitiers had distinctly decided and decreed that as God had
appointed her to do a man's work, it was meet and no scandal to religion
that she should dress as a man; but no matter, this court was ready to
use any and all weapons against Joan, even broken and discredited ones,
and much was going to be made of this one before this trial should end.

“I wore a man's dress, also a sword which Robert de Baudricourt gave me,
but no other weapon.”

“Who was it that advised you to wear the dress of a man?”

Joan was suspicious again. She would not answer.

The question was repeated.

She refused again.

“Answer. It is a command!”

“Passez outre,” was all she said.

So Beaupere gave up the matter for the present.

“What did Baudricourt say to you when you left?”

“He made them that were to go with me promise to take charge of me, and
to me he said, 'Go, and let happen what may!'” (Advienne que pourra!)
After a good deal of questioning upon other matters she was asked again
about her attire. She said it was necessary for her to dress as a man.

“Did your Voice advise it?”

Joan merely answered placidly:

“I believe my Voice gave me good advice.”

It was all that could be got out of her, so the questions wandered to
other matters, and finally to her first meeting with the King at
Chinon. She said she chose out the King, who was unknown to her, by the
revelation of her Voices. All that happened at that time was gone over.
Finally:

“Do you still hear those Voices?”

“They come to me every day.”

“What do you ask of them?”

“I have never asked of them any recompense but the salvation of my
soul.”

“Did the Voice always urge you to follow the army?”

He is creeping upon her again. She answered:

“It required me to remain behind at St. Denis. I would have obeyed if I
had been free, but I was helpless by my wound, and the knights carried
me away by force.”

“When were you wounded?”

“I was wounded in the moat before Paris, in the assault.”

The next question reveals what Beaupere had been leading up to:

“Was it a feast-day?”

You see? The suggestion that a voice coming from God would hardly advise
or permit the violation, by war and bloodshed, of a sacred day.

Joan was troubled a moment, then she answered yes, it was a feast-day.

“Now, then, tell the this: did you hold it right to make the attack on
such a day?”

This was a shot which might make the first breach in a wall which had
suffered no damage thus far. There was immediate silence in the court
and intense expectancy noticeable all about. But Joan disappointed the
house. She merely made a slight little motion with her hand, as when one
brushes away a fly, and said with reposeful indifference:

“Passez outre.”

Smiles danced for a moment in some of the sternest faces there,
and several men even laughed outright. The trap had been long and
laboriously prepared; it fell, and was empty.

The court rose. It had sat for hours, and was cruelly fatigued. Most
of the time had been taken up with apparently idle and purposeless
inquiries about the Chinon events, the exiled Duke of Orleans, Joan's
first proclamation, and so on, but all this seemingly random stuff
had really been sown thick with hidden traps. But Joan had fortunately
escaped them all, some by the protecting luck which attends upon
ignorance and innocence, some by happy accident, the others by force of
her best and surest helper, the clear vision and lightning intuitions of
her extraordinary mind.

Now, then, this daily baiting and badgering of this friendless girl, a
captive in chains, was to continue a long, long time--dignified sport,
a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!--and I may as
well tell you, upon sworn testimony, what it was like from the first
day to the last. When poor Joan had been in her grave a quarter of
a century, the Pope called together that great court which was to
re-examine her history, and whose just verdict cleared her illustrious
name from every spot and stain, and laid upon the verdict and conduct
of our Rouen tribunal the blight of its everlasting execrations. Manchon
and several of the judges who had been members of our court were among
the witnesses who appeared before that Tribunal of Rehabilitation.
Recalling these miserable proceedings which I have been telling you
about, Manchon testified thus:--here you have it, all in fair print in
the unofficial history:

When Joan spoke of her apparitions she was interrupted at almost every
word. They wearied her with long and multiplied interrogatories upon
all sorts of things. Almost every day the interrogatories of the morning
lasted three or four hours; then from these morning interrogatories they
extracted the particularly difficult and subtle points, and these served
as material for the afternoon interrogatories, which lasted two or three
hours. Moment by moment they skipped from one subject to another; yet
in spite of this she always responded with an astonishing wisdom and
memory. She often corrected the judges, saying, “But I have already
answered that once before--ask the recorder,” referring them to me.

And here is the testimony of one of Joan's judges. Remember, these
witnesses are not talking about two or three days, they are talking
about a tedious long procession of days:

They asked her profound questions, but she extricated herself quite
well. Sometimes the questioners changed suddenly and passed on to
another subject to see if she would not contradict herself. They
burdened her with long interrogatories of two or three hours, from which
the judges themselves went forth fatigued. From the snares with which
she was beset the expertest man in the world could not have extricated
himself but with difficulty. She gave her responses with great prudence;
indeed to such a degree that during three weeks I believed she was
inspired.

Ah, had she a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests
say under oath--picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible
court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and
practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They
make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of
the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it so? They from the University of
Paris, she from the sheepfold and the cow-stable!

Ah, yes, she was great, she was wonderful. It took six thousand years
to produce her; her like will not be seen in the earth again in fifty
thousand. Such is my opinion.





7 Craft That Was in Vain

THE THIRD meeting of the court was in that same spacious chamber, next
day, 24th of February.

How did it begin? In just the same old way. When the preparations were
ended, the robed sixty-two massed in their chairs and the guards and
order-keepers distributed to their stations, Cauchon spoke from his
throne and commanded Joan to lay her hands upon the Gospels and swear to
tell the truth concerning everything asked her!

Joan's eyes kindled, and she rose; rose and stood, fine and noble, and
faced toward the Bishop and said:

“Take care what you do, my lord, you who are my judge, for you take a
terrible responsibility on yourself and you presume too far.”

It made a great stir, and Cauchon burst out upon her with an awful
threat--the threat of instant condemnation unless she obeyed. That
made the very bones of my body turn cold, and I saw cheeks about me
blanch--for it meant fire and the stake! But Joan, still standing,
answered him back, proud and undismayed:

“Not all the clergy in Paris and Rouen could condemn me, lacking the
right!”

This made a great tumult, and part of it was applause from the
spectators. Joan resumed her seat.

The Bishop still insisted. Joan said:

“I have already made oath. It is enough.”

The Bishop shouted:

“In refusing to swear, you place yourself under suspicion!”

“Let be. I have sworn already. It is enough.”

The Bishop continued to insist. Joan answered that “she would tell what
she knew--but not all that she knew.”

The Bishop plagued her straight along, till at last she said, in a weary
tone:

“I came from God; I have nothing more to do here. Return me to God, from
whom I came.”

It was piteous to hear; it was the same as saying, “You only want my
life; take it and let me be at peace.”

The Bishop stormed out again:

“Once more I command you to--”

Joan cut in with a nonchalant “Passez outre,” and Cauchon retired from
the struggle; but he retired with some credit this time, for he offered
a compromise, and Joan, always clear-headed, saw protection for herself
in it and promptly and willingly accepted it. She was to swear to tell
the truth “as touching the matters et down in the proces verbal.” They
could not sail her outside of definite limits, now; her course was
over a charted sea, henceforth. The Bishop had granted more than he had
intended, and more than he would honestly try to abide by.

By command, Beaupere resumed his examination of the accused. It being
Lent, there might be a chance to catch her neglecting some detail of
her religious duties. I could have told him he would fail there. Why,
religion was her life!

“Since when have you eaten or drunk?”

If the least thing had passed her lips in the nature of sustenance,
neither her youth nor the fact that she was being half starved in her
prison could save her from dangerous suspicion of contempt for the
commandments of the Church.

“I have done neither since yesterday at noon.”

The priest shifted to the Voices again.

“When have you heard your Voice?”

“Yesterday and to-day.”

“At what time?”

“Yesterday it was in the morning.”

“What were you doing then?”

“I was asleep and it woke me.”

“By touching your arm?”

“No, without touching me.”

“Did you thank it? Did you kneel?”

He had Satan in his mind, you see; and was hoping, perhaps, that by and
by it could be shown that she had rendered homage to the arch enemy of
God and man.

“Yes, I thanked it; and knelt in my bed where I was chained, and joined
my hands and begged it to implore God's help for me so that I might have
light and instruction as touching the answers I should give here.”

“Then what did the Voice say?”

“It told me to answer boldly, and God would help me.” Then she turned
toward Cauchon and said, “You say that you are my judge; now I tell you
again, take care what y

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