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The Complete Works of Mark Twain - Part 10
"That is nothing to the point," she said, coldly, "you get drunk, and
that is worse."
[There was a long and sufficiently idiotic discussion here, which ended
as reported in a previous note.]
CHAPTER X
SO THEY HANGED LUIGI
Dawson's Landing had a week of repose, after the election, and it needed
it, for the frantic and variegated nightmare which had tormented it all
through the preceding week had left it limp, haggard, and exhausted at
the end. It got the week of repose because Angelo had the legs, and was
in too subdued a condition to want to go out and mingle with an irritated
community that had come to disgust and detest him because there was such
a lack of harmony between his morals, which were confessedly excellent,
and his methods of illustrating them, which were distinctly damnable.
The new city officers were sworn in on the following Monday--at least all
but Luigi. There was a complication in his case. His election was
conceded, but he could not sit in the board of aldermen without his
brother, and his brother could not sit there because he was not a member.
There seemed to be no way out of the difficulty but to carry the matter
into the courts, so this was resolved upon.
The case was set for the Monday fortnight. In due course the time
arrived. In the mean time the city government had been at a standstill,
because with out Luigi there was a tie in the board of aldermen, whereas
with him the liquor interest--the richest in the political field--would
have one majority. But the court decided that Angelo could not sit in
the board with him, either in public or executive sessions, and at the
same time forbade the board to deny admission to Luigi, a fairly and
legally chosen alderman. The case was carried up and up from court to
court, yet still the same old original decision was confirmed every time.
As a result, the city government not only stood still, with its hands
tied, but everything it was created to protect and care for went a steady
gait toward rack and ruin. There was no way to levy a tax, so the minor
officials had to resign or starve; therefore they resigned. There being
no city money, the enormous legal expenses on both sides had to be
defrayed by private subscription. But at last the people came to their
senses, and said:
"Pudd'nhead was right at the start--we ought to have hired the official
half of that human phillipene to resign; but it's too late now; some of
us haven't got anything left to hire him with."
"Yes, we have," said another citizen, "we've got this"--and he produced a
halter.
Many shouted: "That's the ticket." But others said: "No--Count Angelo is
innocent; we mustn't hang him."
"Who said anything about hanging him? We are only going to hang the
other one."
"Then that is all right--there is no objection to that."
So they hanged Luigi. And so ends the history of "Those Extraordinary
Twins."
FINAL REMARKS
As you see, it was an extravagant sort of a tale, and had no purpose but
to exhibit that monstrous "freak" in all sorts of grotesque lights. But
when Roxy wandered into the tale she had to be furnished with something
to do; so she changed the children in the cradle; this necessitated the
invention of a reason for it; this, in turn, resulted in making the
children prominent personages--nothing could prevent it of course. Their
career began to take a tragic aspect, and some one had to be brought in
to help work the machinery; so Pudd'nhead Wilson was introduced and taken
on trial. By this time the whole show was being run by the new people
and in their interest, and the original show was become side-tracked and
forgotten; the twin-monster, and the heroine, and the lads, and the old
ladies had dwindled to inconsequentialities and were merely in the way.
Their story was one story, the new people's story was another story, and
there was no connection between them, no interdependence, no kinship.
It is not practicable or rational to try to tell two stories at the same
time; so I dug out the farce and left the tragedy.
The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows now how the other
kind do it.
MARK TWAIN.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Those Extraordinary Twins
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
VOLUME 1
by Mark Twain
Consider this unique and imposing distinction. Since the writing of
human history began, Joan of Arc is the only person, of either sex,
who has ever held supreme command of the military forces of a
nation at the age of seventeen
LOUIS KOSSUTH.
Contents
Translator's Preface
A Peculiarity of Joan of Arc's History
The Sieur Louis de Conte
Book I -- IN DOMREMY
1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
3 All Aflame with Love of France
4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
6 Joan and Archangel Michael
7 She Delivers the Divine Command
8 Why the Scorners Relented
Book II -- IN COURT AND CAMP
1 Joan Says Good-By
2 The Governor Speeds Joan
3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
6 Joan Convinces the King
7 Our Paladin in His Glory
8 Joan Persuades the Inquisitors
9 She Is Made General-in-Chief
10 The Maid's Sword and Banner
11 The War March Is Begun
12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army
13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise
14 What the English Answered
15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
16 The Finding of the Dwarf
17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth
18 Joan's First Battle-Field
19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts
20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
22 The Fate of France Decided
23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King
24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility
25 At Last--Forward!
26 The Last Doubts Scattered
27 How Joan Took Jargeau
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
(her page and secretary)
In Two Volumes
Volume 1.
Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English
from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives
of France
by JEAN FRANCOIS ALDEN
Authorities examined in verification of the truthfulness of this
narrative:
J. E. J. QUICHERAT, Condamnation et Rehabilitation de Jeanne d'Arc.
J. FABRE, Proces de Condamnation de Jeanne d'Arc.
H. A. WALLON, Jeanne d'Arc.
M. SEPET, Jeanne d'Arc.
J. MICHELET, Jeanne d'Arc.
BERRIAT DE SAINT-PRIX, La Famille de Jeanne d'Arc.
La Comtesse A. DE CHABANNES, La Vierge Lorraine.
Monseigneur RICARD, Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable.
Lord RONALD GOWER, F.S.A., Joan of Arc. JOHN O'HAGAN, Joan of Arc.
JANET TUCKEY, Joan of Arc the Maid.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man's character one must
judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards
of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of
their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no
illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet
the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It
can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or
apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, it is still
flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still occupies the loftiest
place possible to human attainment, a loftier one than has been reached
by any other mere mortal.
When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the
rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at
the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her
and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful
when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was
become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a
promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great
thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves
upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine,
and delicate when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal;
she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was
steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had
forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when
men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly
true to an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal
dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a
dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of
her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the
highest places was foul in both--she was all these things in an age when
crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest
personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era
and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black
with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and beastialities.
She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a
place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can
be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her King from
his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head, she was offered
rewards and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing.
All she would take for herself--if the King would grant it--was leave to
go back to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel her
mother's arms about her, and be her housemaid and helper. The
selfishness of this unspoiled general of victorious armies, companion of
princes, and idol of an applauding and grateful nation, reached but that
far and no farther.
The work wrought by Joan of Arc may fairly be regarded as ranking any
recorded in history, when one considers the conditions under which it
was undertaken, the obstacles in the way, and the means at her disposal.
Caesar carried conquests far, but he did it with the trained and
confident veterans of Rome, and was a trained soldier himself; and
Napoleon swept away the disciplined armies of Europe, but he also was a
trained soldier, and the began his work with patriot battalions inflamed
and inspired by the miracle-working new breath of Liberty breathed upon
them by the Revolution--eager young apprentices to the splendid trade of
war, not old and broken men-at-arms, despairing survivors of an age-long
accumulation of monotonous defeats; but Joan of Arc, a mere child in
years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village girl unknown and without
influence, found a great nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless
under an alien domination, its treasury bankrupt, its soldiers
disheartened and dispersed, all spirit torpid, all courage dead in the
hearts of the people through long years of foreign and domestic outrage
and oppression, their King cowed, resigned to its fate, and preparing to
fly the country; and she laid her hand upon this nation, this corpse,
and it rose and followed her. She led it from victory to victory, she
turned back the tide of the Hundred Years' War, she fatally crippled the
English power, and died with the earned title of DELIVERER OF FRANCE,
which she bears to this day.
And for all reward, the French King, whom she had crowned, stood supine
and indifferent, while French priests took the noble child, the most
innocent, the most lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, and
burned her alive at the stake.
A PECULIARITY OF JOAN OF ARC'S HISTORY
The details of the life of Joan of Arc form a biography which is unique
among the world's biographies in one respect: It is the only story of a
human life which comes to us under oath, the only one which comes to us
from the witness-stand. The official records of the Great Trial of 1431,
and of the Process of Rehabilitation of a quarter of a century later,
are still preserved in the National Archives of France, and they furnish
with remarkable fullness the facts of her life. The history of no other
life of that remote time is known with either the certainty or the
comprehensiveness that attaches to hers.
The Sieur Louis de Conte is faithful to her official history in his
Personal Recollections, and thus far his trustworthiness is
unimpeachable; but his mass of added particulars must depend for credit
upon his word alone.
THE TRANSLATOR.
THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
To his Great-Great-Grand Nephews and Nieces
This is the year 1492. I am eighty-two years of age. The things I am
going to tell you are things which I saw myself as a child and as a
youth.
In all the tales and songs and histories of Joan of Arc, which you and
the rest of the world read and sing and study in the books wrought in
the late invented art of printing, mention is made of me, the Sieur
Louis de Conte--I was her page and secretary, I was with her from the
beginning until the end.
I was reared in the same village with her. I played with her every day,
when we were little children together, just as you play with your mates.
Now that we perceive how great she was, now that her name fills the
whole world, it seems strange that what I am saying is true; for it is
as if a perishable paltry candle should speak of the eternal sun riding
in the heavens and say, "He was gossip and housemate to me when we were
candles together." And yet it is true, just as I say. I was her
playmate, and I fought at her side in the wars; to this day I carry in
my mind, fine and clear, the picture of that dear little figure, with
breast bent to the flying horse's neck, charging at the head of the
armies of France, her hair streaming back, her silver mail plowing
steadily deeper and deeper into the thick of the battle, sometimes
nearly drowned from sight by tossing heads of horses, uplifted
sword-arms, wind-blow plumes, and intercepting shields. I was with her
to the end; and when that black day came whose accusing shadow will lie
always upon the memory of the mitered French slaves of England who were
her assassins, and upon France who stood idle and essayed no rescue, my
hand was the last she touched in life.
As the years and the decades drifted by, and the spectacle of the
marvelous child's meteor flight across the war firmament of France and
its extinction in the smoke-clouds of the stake receded deeper and
deeper into the past and grew ever more strange, and wonderful, and
divine, and pathetic, I came to comprehend and recognize her at last for
what she was--the most noble life that was ever born into this world
save only One.
BOOK I IN DOMREMY
Chapter 1 When Wolves Ran Free in Paris
I, THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE, was born in Neufchateau, on the 6th of
January, 1410; that is to say, exactly two years before Joan of Arc was
born in Domremy. My family had fled to those distant regions from the
neighborhood of Paris in the first years of the century. In politics
they were Armagnacs--patriots; they were for our own French King, crazy
and impotent as he was. The Burgundian party, who were for the English,
had stripped them, and done it well. They took everything but my
father's small nobility, and when he reached Neufchateau he reached it
in poverty and with a broken spirit. But the political atmosphere there
was the sort he liked, and that was something. He came to a region of
comparative quiet; he left behind him a region peopled with furies,
madmen, devils, where slaughter was a daily pastime and no man's life
safe for a moment. In Paris, mobs roared through the streets nightly,
sacking, burning, killing, unmolested, uninterrupted. The sun rose upon
wrecked and smoking buildings, and upon mutilated corpses lying here,
there, and yonder about the streets, just as they fell, and stripped
naked by thieves, the unholy gleaners after the mob. None had the
courage to gather these dead for burial; they were left there to rot and
create plagues.
And plagues they did create. Epidemics swept away the people like flies,
and the burials were conducted secretly and by night, for public
funerals were not allowed, lest the revelation of the magnitude of the
plague's work unman the people and plunge them into despair. Then came,
finally, the bitterest winter which had visited France in five hundred
years. Famine, pestilence, slaughter, ice, snow--Paris had all these at
once. The dead lay in heaps about the streets, and wolves entered the
city in daylight and devoured them.
Ah, France had fallen low--so low! For more than three quarters of a
century the English fangs had been bedded in her flesh, and so cowed had
her armies become by ceaseless rout and defeat that it was said and
accepted that the mere sight of an English army was sufficient to put a
French one to flight.
When I was five years old the prodigious disaster of Agincourt fell upon
France; and although the English King went home to enjoy his glory, he
left the country prostrate and a prey to roving bands of Free Companions
in the service of the Burgundian party, and one of these bands came
raiding through Neufchateau one night, and by the light of our burning
roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder
brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while they
begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and
mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When
the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the
burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead
and the wounded, for the rest had taken flight and hidden themselves.
I was sent to Domremy, to the priest, whose housekeeper became a loving
mother to me. The priest, in the course of time, taught me to read and
write, and he and I were the only persons in the village who possessed
this learning.
At the time that the house of this good priest, Guillaume Fronte, became
my home, I was six years old. We lived close by the village church, and
the small garden of Joan's parents was behind the church. As to that
family there were Jacques d'Arc the father, his wife Isabel Romee; three
sons--Jacques, ten years old, Pierre, eight, and Jean, seven; Joan,
four, and her baby sister Catherine, about a year old. I had these
children for playmates from the beginning. I had some other playmates
besides--particularly four boys: Pierre Morel, Etienne Roze, Noel
Rainguesson, and Edmond Aubrey, whose father was maire at that time;
also two girls, about Joan's age, who by and by became her favorites;
one was named Haumetter, the other was called Little Mengette. These
girls were common peasant children, like Joan herself. When they grew
up, both married common laborers. Their estate was lowly enough, you
see; yet a time came, many years after, when no passing stranger,
howsoever great he might be, failed to go and pay his reverence to those
to humble old women who had been honored in their youth by the
friendship of Joan of Arc.
These were all good children, just of the ordinary peasant type; not
bright, of course--you would not expect that--but good-hearted and
companionable, obedient to their parents and the priest; and as they
grew up they became properly stocked with narrowness and prejudices got
at second hand from their elders, and adopted without reserve; and
without examination also--which goes without saying. Their religion was
inherited, their politics the same. John Huss and his sort might find
fault with the Church, in Domremy it disturbed nobody's faith; and when
the split came, when I was fourteen, and we had three Popes at once,
nobody in Domremy was worried about how to choose among them--the Pope
of Rome was the right one, a Pope outside of Rome was no Pope at all.
Every human creature in the village was an Armagnac--a patriot--and if
we children hotly hated nothing else in the world, we did certainly hate
the English and Burgundian name and polity in that way.
Chapter 2 The Fairy Tree of Domremy
OUR DOMREMY was like any other humble little hamlet of that remote time
and region. It was a maze of crooked, narrow lanes and alleys shaded and
sheltered by the overhanging thatch roofs of the barnlike houses. The
houses were dimly lighted by wooden-shuttered windows--that is, holes
in the walls which served for windows. The floors were dirt, and there
was very little furniture. Sheep and cattle grazing was the main
industry; all the young folks tended flocks.
The situation was beautiful. From one edge of the village a flowery
plain extended in a wide sweep to the river--the Meuse; from the rear
edge of the village a grassy slope rose gradually, and at the top was
the great oak forest--a forest that was deep and gloomy and dense, and
full of interest for us children, for many murders had been done in it
by outlaws in old times, and in still earlier times prodigious dragons
that spouted fire and poisonous vapors from their nostrils had their
homes in there. In fact, one was still living in there in our own time.
It was as long as a tree, and had a body as big around as a tierce, and
scales like overlapping great tiles, and deep ruby eyes as large as a
cavalier's hat, and an anchor-fluke on its tail as big as I don't know
what, but very big, even unusually so for a dragon, as everybody said
who knew about dragons. It was thought that this dragon was of a
brilliant blue color, with gold mottlings, but no one had ever seen it,
therefore this was not known to be so, it was only an opinion. It was
not my opinion; I think there is no sense in forming an opinion when
there is no evidence to form it on. If you build a person without any
bones in him he may look fair enough to the eye, but he will be limber
and cannot stand up; and I consider that evidence is the bones of an
opinion. But I will take up this matter more at large at another time,
and try to make the justness of my position appear. As to that dragon, I
always held the belief that its color was gold and without blue, for
that has always been the color of dragons. That this dragon lay but a
little way within the wood at one time is shown by the fact that Pierre
Morel was in there one day and smelt it, and recognized it by the smell.
It gives one a horrid idea of how near to us the deadliest danger can be
and we not suspect it.
In the earliest times a hundred knights from many remote places in the
earth would have gone in there one after another, to kill the dragon and
get the reward, but in our time that method had gone out, and the priest
had become the one that abolished dragons. Pere Guillaume Fronte did it
in this case. He had a procession, with candles and incense and banners,
and marched around the edge of the wood and exorcised the dragon, and it
was never heard of again, although it was the opinion of many that the
smell never wholly passed away. Not that any had ever smelt the smell
again, for none had; it was only an opinion, like that other--and lacked
bones, you see. I know that the creature was there before the exorcism,
but whether it was there afterward or not is a thing which I cannot be
so positive about.
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward
Vaucouleurs stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and
a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on
summer days the children went there--oh, every summer for more than five
hundred years--went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours
together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it
was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are, and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild
flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the
fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as
keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness
between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years--tradition said a thousand--but only the warmest affection and the
most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child's playmates did, and the sign of it was there
to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where that child was used to sit under the
tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the
reason it was known that the fairies did it was this--that it was made
all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the
Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a
mystic privilege not granted to any others of the children of this
world. Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond
the vague and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose
soft and rich and fair a vision of the Tree--if all was well with his
soul. That was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways:
once as a warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul
was the captive of sin, and then the Tree appeared in its desolate
winter aspect--then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If
repentance came, and purity of life, the vision came again, this time
summer-clad and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the
vision was withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still
others said that the vision came but once, and then only to the sinless
dying forlorn in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear
reminder of their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts
like the picture of the Tree that was the darling of their love and the
comrade of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through
the divine days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I knew to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only know that the last one was; and it is my thought that if one
keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which he
cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it--and there
is profit in that. I know that when the Children of the Tree die in a
far land, then--if they be at peace with God--they turn their longing
eyes toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud
that curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the Fairy Tree,
clothed in a dream of golden light; and they see the bloomy mead sloping
away to the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and
sweet the fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades
and passes--but they know, they know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you who stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel and
Jacques d'Arc, and many others believed that the vision appeared twice
--to a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they knew it. Probably
because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most
things at second hand in this world.
Now one thing that does make it quite likely that there were really two
apparitions of the Tree is this fact: From the most ancient times if one
saw a villager of ours with his face ash-white and rigid with a ghastly
fright, it was common for every one to whisper to his neighbor, "Ah, he
is in sin, and has got his warning." And the neighbor would shudder at
the thought and whisper back, "Yes, poor soul, he has seen the Tree."
Such evidences as these have their weight; they are not to be put aside
with a wave of the hand. A thing that is backed by the cumulative
evidence of centuries naturally gets nearer and nearer to being proof
all the time; and if this continue and continue, it will some day become
authority--and authority is a bedded rock, and will abide.
In my long life I have seen several cases where the tree appeared
announcing a death which was still far away; but in none of these was
the person in a state of sin. No; the apparition was in these cases only
a special grace; in place of deferring the tidings of that soul's
redemption till the day of death, the apparition brought them long
before, and with them peace--peace that might no more be disturbed--the
eternal peace of God. I myself, old and broken, wait with serenity; for
I have seen the vision of the Tree. I have seen it, and am content.
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and
danced around the Fairy Tree they sang a song which was the Tree's song,
the song of L'Arbre fee de Bourlemont. They sang it to a quaint sweet
air--a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my dreaming
spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me and
carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can know
or feel what that song has been, through the drifting centuries, to
exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries
foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us,
and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the
water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:
"And when, in Exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of
thee, Oh, rise upon our sight!"
And you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the
Tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And that hallows
it, yes, you will grant that:
L'ARBRE FEE DE BOURLEMONT
SONG OF THE CHILDREN
Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children's tears! They brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healed, rose a leaf.
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont?
The children's love! They've loved you long
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They've nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young--
A thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fee de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand'ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
The fairies were still there when we were children, but we never saw
them; because, a hundred years before that, the priest of Domremy had
held a religious function under the tree and denounced them as being
blood-kin to the Fiend and barred them from redemption; and then he
warned them never to show themselves again, nor hang any more
immortelles, on pain of perpetual banishment from that parish.
All the children pleaded for the fairies, and said they were their good
friends and dear to them and never did them any harm, but the priest
would not listen, and said it was sin and shame to have such friends. The
children mourned and could not be comforted; and they made an agreement
among themselves that they would always continue to hang flower-wreaths
on the tree as a perpetual sign to the fairies that they were still loved
and remembered, though lost to sight.
But late one night a great misfortune befell. Edmond Aubrey's mother
passed by the Tree, and the fairies were stealing a dance, not thinking
anybody was by; and they were so busy, and so intoxicated with the wild
happiness of it, and with the bumpers of dew sharpened up with honey
which they had been drinking, that they noticed nothing; so Dame Aubrey
stood there astonished and admiring, and saw the little fantastic atoms
holding hands, as many as three hundred of them, tearing around in a
great ring half as big as an ordinary bedroom, and leaning away back and
spreading their mouths with laughter and song, which she could hear quite
distinctly, and kicking their legs up as much as three inches from the
ground in perfect abandon and hilarity--oh, the very maddest and
witchingest dance the woman ever saw.
But in about a minute or two minutes the poor little ruined creatures
discovered her. They burst out in one heartbreaking squeak of grief and
terror and fled every which way, with their wee hazel-nut fists in their
eyes and crying; and so disappeared.
The heartless woman--no, the foolish woman; she was not heartless, but
only thoughtless--went straight home and told the neighbors all about it,
whilst we, the small friends of the fairies, were asleep and not witting
the calamity that was come upon us, and all unconscious that we ought to
be up and trying to stop these fatal tongues. In the morning everybody
knew, and the disaster was complete, for where everybody knows a thing
the priest knows it, of course. We all flocked to Pere Fronte, crying and
begging--and he had to cry, too, seeing our sorrow, for he had a most
kind and gentle nature; and he did not want to banish the fairies, and
said so; but said he had no choice, for it had been decreed that if they
ever revealed themselves to man again, they must go. This all happened at
the worst time possible, for Joan of Arc was ill of a fever and out of
her head, and what could we do who had not her gifts of reasoning and
persuasion? We flew in a swarm to her bed and cried out, "Joan, wake!
Wake, there is no moment to lose! Come and plead for the fairies--come
and save them; only you can do it!"
But her mind was wandering, she did not know what we said nor what we
meant; so we went away knowing all was lost. Yes, all was lost, forever
lost; the faithful friends of the children for five hundred years must
go, and never come back any more.
It was a bitter day for us, that day that Pere Fronte held the function
under the tree and banished the fairies. We could not wear mourning that
any could have noticed, it would not have been allowed; so we had to be
content with some poor small rag of black tied upon our garments where it
made no show; but in our hearts we wore mourning, big and noble and
occupying all the room, for our hearts were ours; they could not get at
them to prevent that.
The great tree--l'Arbre Fee do Bourlemont was its beautiful name--was
never afterward quite as much to us as it had been before, but it was
always dear; is dear to me yet when I got there now, once a year in my
old age, to sit under it and bring back the lost playmates of my youth
and group them about me and look upon their faces through my tears and
break my heart, oh, my God! No, the place was not quite the same
afterward. In one or two ways it could not be; for, the fairies'
protection being gone, the spring lost much of its freshness and
coldness, and more than two-thirds of its volume, and the banished
serpents and stinging insects returned, and multiplied, and became a
torment and have remained so to this day.
When that wise little child, Joan, got well, we realized how much her
illness had cost us; for we found that we had been right in believing she
could save the fairies. She burst into a great storm of anger, for so
little a creature, and went straight to Pere Fronte, and stood up before
him where he sat, and made reverence and said:
"The fairies were to go if they showed themselves to people again, is it
not so?"
"Yes, that was it, dear."
"If a man comes prying into a person's room at midnight when that person
is half-naked, will you be so unjust as to say that that person is
showing himself to that man?"
"Well--no." The good priest looked a little troubled and uneasy when he
said it.
"Is a sin a sin, anyway, even if one did not intend to commit it?"
Pere Fronte threw up his hands and cried out:
"Oh, my poor little child, I see all my fault," and he drew here to his
side and put an arm around her and tried to make his peace with her, but
her temper was up so high that she could not get it down right away, but
buried her head against his breast and broke out crying and said:
"Then the fairies committed no sin, for there was no intention to commit
one, they not knowing that any one was by; and because they were little
creatures and could not speak for themselves and say the saw was against
the intention, not against the innocent act, because they had no friend
to think that simple thing for them and say it, they have been sent away
from their home forever, and it was wrong, wrong to do it!"
The good father hugged her yet closer to his side and said:
"Oh, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the heedless and unthinking
are condemned; would God I could bring the little creatures back, for
your sake. And mine, yes, and mine; for I have been unjust. There, there,
don't cry--nobody could be sorrier than your poor old friend--don't cry,
dear."
"But I can't stop right away, I've got to. And it is no little matter,
this thing that you have done. Is being sorry penance enough for such an
act?"
Pere Fronte turned away his face, for it would have hurt her to see him
laugh, and said:
"Oh, thou remorseless but most just accuser, no, it is not. I will put on
sackcloth and ashes; there--are you satisfied?"
Joan's sobs began to diminish, and she presently looked up at the old man
through her tears, and said, in her simple way:
"Yes, that will do--if it will clear you."
Pere Fronte would have been moved to laugh again, perhaps, if he had not
remembered in time that he had made a contract, and not a very agreeable
one. It must be fulfilled. So he got up and went to the fireplace, Joan
watching him with deep interest, and took a shovelful of cold ashes, and
was going to empty them on his old gray head when a better idea came to
him, and he said:
"Would you mind helping me, dear?"
"How, father?"
He got down on his knees and bent his head low, and said:
"Take the ashes and put them on my head for me."
The matter ended there, of course. The victory was with the priest. One
can imagine how the idea of such a profanation would strike Joan or any
other child in the village. She ran and dropped upon her knees by his
side and said:
"Oh, it is dreadful. I didn't know that that was what one meant by
sackcloth and ashes--do please get up, father."
"But I can't until I am forgiven. Do you forgive me?"
"I? Oh, you have done nothing to me, father; it is yourself that must
forgive yourself for wronging those poor things. Please get up, gather,
won't you?"
"But I am worse off now than I was before. I thought I was earning your
forgiveness, but if it is my own, I can't be lenient; it would not become
me. Now what can I do? Find me some way out of this with your wise little
head."
The Pere would not stir, for all Joan's pleadings. She was about to cry
again; then she had an idea, and seized the shovel and deluged her own
head with the ashes, stammering out through her chokings and
suffocations:
"There--now it is done. Oh, please get up, father."
The old man, both touched and amused, gathered her to his breast and
said:
"Oh, you incomparable child! It's a humble martyrdom, and not of a sort
presentable in a picture, but the right and true spirit is in it; that I
testify."
Then he brushed the ashes out of her hair, and helped her scour her face
and neck and properly tidy herself up. He was in fine spirits now, and
ready for further argument, so he took his seat and drew Joan to his side
again, and said:
"Joan, you were used to make wreaths there at the Fairy Tree with the
other children; is it not so?"
That was the way he always started out when he was going to corner me up
and catch me in something--just that gentle, indifferent way that fools a
person so, and leads him into the trap, he never noticing which way he is
traveling until he is in and the door shut on him. He enjoyed that. I
knew he was going to drop corn along in front of Joan now. Joan answered:
"Yes, father."
"Did you hang them on the tree?"
"No, father."
"Didn't hang them there?"
"No."
"Why didn't you?"
"I--well, I didn't wish to."
"Didn't wish to?"
"No, father."
"What did you do with them?"
"I hung them in the church."
"Why didn't you want to hang them in the tree?"
"Because it was said that the fairies were of kin to the Fiend, and that
it was sinful to show them honor."
"Did you believe it was wrong to honor them so?"
"Yes. I thought it must be wrong."
"Then if it was wrong to honor them in that way, and if they were of kin
to the Fiend, they could be dangerous company for you and the other
children, couldn't they?"
"I suppose so--yes, I think so."
He studied a minute, and I judged he was going to spring his trap, and he
did. He said:
"Then the matter stands like this. They were banned creatures, of fearful
origin; they could be dangerous company for the children. Now give me a
rational reason, dear, if you can think of any, why you call it a wrong
to drive them into banishment, and why you would have saved them from it.
In a word, what loss have you suffered by it?"
How stupid of him to go and throw his case away like that! I could have
boxed his ears for vexation if he had been a boy. He was going along all
right until he ruined everything by winding up in that foolish and fatal
way. What had she lost by it! Was he never going to find out what kind of
a child Joan of Arc was? Was he never going to learn that things which
merely concerned her own gain or loss she cared nothing about? Could he
never get the simple fact into his head that the sure way and the only
way to rouse her up and set her on fire was to show her where some other
person was going to suffer wrong or hurt or loss? Why, he had gone and
set a trap for himself--that was all he had accomplished.
The minute those words were out of his mouth her temper was up, the
indignant tears rose in her eyes, and she burst out on him with an energy
and passion which astonished him, but didn't astonish me, for I knew he
had fired a mine when he touched off his ill-chosen climax.
"Oh, father, how can you talk like that? Who owns France?"
"God and the King."
"Not Satan?"
"Satan, my child? This is the footstool of the Most High--Satan owns no
handful of its soil."
"Then who gave those poor creatures their home? God. Who protected them
in it all those centuries? God. Who allowed them to dance and play there
all those centuries and found no fault with it? God. Who disapproved of
God's approval and put a threat upon them? A man. Who caught them again
in harmless sports that God allowed and a man forbade, and carried out
that threat, and drove the poor things away from the home the good God
gave them in His mercy and His pity, and sent down His rain and dew and
sunshine upon it five hundred years in token of His peace? It was their
home--theirs, by the grace of God and His good heart, and no man had a
right to rob them of it. And they were the gentlest, truest friends that
children ever had, and did them sweet and loving service all these five
long centuries, and never any hurt or harm; and the children loved them,
and now they mourn for them, and there is no healing for their grief. And
what had the children done that they should suffer this cruel stroke? The
poor fairies could have been dangerous company for the children? Yes, but
never had been; and could is no argument. Kinsmen of the Fiend? What of
it? Kinsmen of the Fiend have rights, and these had; and children have
rights, and these had; and if I had been there I would have spoken--I
would have begged for the children and the fiends, and stayed your hand
and saved them all. But now--oh, now, all is lost; everything is lost,
and there is no help more!"
Then she finished with a blast at that idea that fairy kinsmen of the
Fiend ought to be shunned and denied human sympathy and friendship
because salvation was barred against them. She said that for that very
reason people ought to pity them, and do every humane and loving thing
they could to make them forget the hard fate that had been put upon them
by accident of birth and no fault of their own. "Poor little creatures!"
she said. "What can a person's heart be made of that can pity a
Christian's child and yet can't pity a devil's child, that a thousand
times more needs it!"
She had torn loose from Pere Fronte, and was crying, with her knuckles in
her eyes, and stamping her small feet in a fury; and now she burst out of
the place and was gone before we could gather our senses together out of
this storm of words and this whirlwind of passion.
The Pere had got upon his feet, toward the last, and now he stood there
passing his hand back and forth across his forehead like a person who is
dazed and troubled; then he turned and wandered toward the door of his
little workroom, and as he passed through it I heard him murmur
sorrowfully:
"Ah, me, poor children, poor fiends, they have rights, and she said
true--I never thought of that. God forgive me, I am to blame."
When I heard that, I knew I was right in the thought that he had set a
trap for himself. It was so, and he had walked into it, you see. I seemed
to feel encouraged, and wondered if mayhap I might get him into one; but
upon reflection my heart went down, for this was not my gift.
Chapter 3 All Aflame with Love of France
SPEAKING of this matter reminds me of many incidents, many things that I
could tell, but I think I will not try to do it now. It will be more to
my present humor to call back a little glimpse of the simple and
colorless good times we used to have in our village homes in those
peaceful days--especially in the winter. In the summer we children were
out on the breezy uplands with the flocks from dawn till night, and then
there was noisy frolicking and all that; but winter was the cozy time,
winter was the snug time. Often we gathered in old Jacques d'Arc's big
dirt-floored apartment, with a great fire going, and played games, and
sang songs, and told fortunes, and listened to the old villagers tell
tales and histories and lies and one thing and another till twelve
o'clock at night.
One winter's night we were gathered there--it was the winter that for
years afterward they called the hard winter--and that particular night
was a sharp one. It blew a gale outside, and the screaming of the wind
was a stirring sound, and I think I may say it was beautiful, for I think
it is great and fine and beautiful to hear the wind rage and storm and
blow its clarions like that, when you are inside and comfortable. And we
were. We had a roaring fire, and the pleasant spit-spit of the snow and
sleet falling in it down the chimney, and the yarning and laughing and
singing went on at a noble rate till about ten o'clock, and then we had a
supper of hot porridge and beans, and meal cakes with butter, and
appetites to match.
Little Joan sat on a box apart, and had her bowl and bread on another
one, and her pets around her helping. She had more than was usual of them
or economical, because all the outcast cats came and took up with her,
and homeless or unlovable animals of other kinds heard about it and came,
and these spread the matter to the other creatures, and they came also;
and as the birds and the other timid wild things of the woods were not
afraid of her, but always had an idea she was a friend when they came
across her, and generally struck up an acquaintance with her to get
invited to the house, she always had samples of those breeds in stock.
She was hospitable to them all, for an animal was an animal to her, and
dear by mere reason of being an animal, no matter about its sort or
social station; and as she would allow of no cages, no collars, no
fetters, but left the creatures free to come and go as they liked, that
contented them, and they came; but they didn't go, to any extent, and so
they were a marvelous nuisance, and made Jacques d'Arc swear a good deal;
but his wife said God gave the child the instinct, and knew what He was
doing when He did it, therefore it must have its course; it would be no
sound prudence to meddle with His affairs when no invitation had been
extended. So the pets were left in peace, and here they were, as I have
said, rabbits, birds, squirrels, cats, and other reptiles, all around the
child, and full of interest in her supper, and helping what they could.
There was a very small squirrel on her shoulder, sitting up, as those
creatures do, and turning a rocky fragment of prehistoric chestnut-cake
over and over in its knotty hands, and hunting for the less indurated
places, and giving its elevated bushy tail a flirt and its pointed ears a
toss when it found one--signifying thankfulness and surprise--and then it
filed that place off with those two slender front teeth which a squirrel
carries for that purpose and not for ornament, for ornamental they never
could be, as any will admit that have noticed them.
Everything was going fine and breezy and hilarious, but then there came
an interruption, for somebody hammered on the door. It was one of those
ragged road-stragglers--the eternal wars kept the country full of them.
He came in, all over snow, and stamped his feet, and shook, and brushed
himself, and shut the door, and took off his limp ruin of a hat, and
slapped it once or twice against his leg to knock off its fleece of snow,
and then glanced around on the company with a pleased look upon his thin
face, and a most yearning and famished one in his eye when it fell upon
the victuals, and then he gave us a humble and conciliatory salutation,
and said it was a blessed thing to have a fire like that on such a night,
and a roof overhead like this, and that rich food to eat, and loving
friends to talk with--ah, yes, this was true, and God help the homeless,
and such as must trudge the roads in this weather.
Nobody said anything. The embarrassed poor creature stood there and
appealed to one face after the other with his eyes, and found no welcome
in any, the smile on his own face flickering and fading and perishing,
meanwhile; then he dropped his gaze, the muscles of his face began to
twitch, and he put up his hand to cover this womanish sign of weakness.
"Sit down!"
This thunder-blast was from old Jacques d'Arc, and Joan was the object of
it. The stranger was startled, and took his hand away, and there was Joan
standing before him offering him her bowl of porridge. The man said:
"God Almighty bless you, my darling!" and then the tears came, and ran
down his cheeks, but he was afraid to take the bowl.
"Do you hear me? Sit down, I say!"
There could not be a child more easy to persuade than Joan, but this was
not the way. Her father had not the art; neither could he learn it. Joan
said:
"Father, he is hungry; I can see it."
"Let him work for food, then. We are being eaten out of house and home by
his like, and I have said I would endure it no more, and will keep my
word. He has the face of a rascal anyhow, and a villain. Sit down, I tell
you!"
"I know not if he is a rascal or no, but he is hungry, father, and shall
have my porridge--I do not need it."
"If you don't obey me I'll-- Rascals are not entitled to help from honest
people, and no bite nor sup shall they have in this house. Joan!"
She set her bowl down on the box and came over and stood before her
scowling father, and said:
"Father, if you will not let me, then it must be as you say; but I would
that you would think--then you would see that it is not right to punish
one part of him for what the other part has done; for it is that poor
stranger's head that does the evil things, but it is not his head that is
hungry, it is his stomach, and it has done no harm to anybody, but is
without blame, and innocent, not having any way to do a wrong, even if it
was minded to it. Please let--"
"What an idea! It is the most idiotic speech I ever heard."
But Aubrey, the maire, broke in, he being fond of an argument, and having
a pretty gift in that regard, as all acknowledged. Rising in his place
and leaning his knuckles upon the table and looking about him with easy
dignity, after the manner of such as be orators, he began, smooth and
persuasive:
"I will differ with you there, gossip, and will undertake to show the
company"--here he looked around upon us and nodded his head in a
confident way--"that there is a grain of sense in what the child has
said; for look you, it is of a certainty most true and demonstrable that
it is a man's head that is master and supreme ruler over his whole body.
Is that granted? Will any deny it?" He glanced around again; everybody
indicated assent. "Very well, then; that being the case, no part of the
body is responsible for the result when it carries out an order delivered
to it by the head; ergo, the head is alone responsible for crimes done by
a man's hands or feet or stomach--do you get the idea? am I right thus
far?" Everybody said yes, and said it with enthusiasm, and some said, one
to another, that the maire was in great form to-night and at his very
best--which pleased the maire exceedingly and made his eyes sparkle with
pleasure, for he overheard these things; so he went on in the same
fertile and brilliant way. "Now, then, we will consider what the term
responsibility means, and how it affects the case in point.
Responsibility makes a man responsible for only those things for which he
is properly responsible"--and he waved his spoon around in a wide sweep
to indicate the comprehensive nature of that class of responsibilities
which render people responsible, and several exclaimed, admiringly, "He
is right!--he has put that whole tangled thing into a nutshell--it is
wonderful!" After a little pause to give the interest opportunity to
gather and grow, he went on: "Very good. Let us suppose the case of a
pair of tongs that falls upon a man's foot, causing a cruel hurt. Will
you claim that the tongs are punishable for that? The question is
answered; I see by your faces that you would call such a claim absurd.
Now, why is it absurd? It is absurd because, there being no reasoning
faculty--that is to say, no faculty of personal command--in a pair of
togs, personal responsibility for the acts of the tongs is wholly absent
from the tongs; and, therefore, responsibility being absent, punishment
cannot ensue. Am I right?" A hearty burst of applause was his answer.
"Now, then, we arrive at a man's stomach. Consider how exactly, how
marvelously, indeed, its situation corresponds to that of a pair of
tongs. Listen--and take careful note, I beg you. Can a man's stomach plan
a murder? No. Can it plan a theft? No. Can it plan an incendiary fire?
No. Now answer me--can a pair of tongs?" (There were admiring shouts of
"No!" and "The cases are just exact!" and "Don't he do it splendid!")
"Now, then, friends and neighbors, a stomach which cannot plan a crime
cannot be a principal in the commission of it--that is plain, as you see.
The matter is narrowed down by that much; we will narrow it further. Can
a stomach, of its own motion, assist at a crime? The answer is no,
because command is absent, the reasoning faculty is absent, volition is
absent--as in the case of the tongs. We perceive now, do we not, that the
stomach is totally irresponsible for crimes committed, either in whole or
in part, by it?" He got a rousing cheer for response. "Then what do we
arrive at as our verdict? Clearly this: that there is no such thing in
this world as a guilty stomach; that in the body of the veriest rascal
resides a pure and innocent stomach; that, whatever it's owner may do, it
at least should be sacred in our eyes; and that while God gives us minds
to think just and charitable and honorable thoughts, it should be, and
is, our privilege, as well as our duty, not only to feed the hungry
stomach that resides in a rascal, having pity for its sorrow and its
need, but to do it gladly, gratefully, in recognition of its sturdy and
loyal maintenance of its purity and innocence in the midst of temptation
and in company so repugnant to its better feelings. I am done."
Well, you never saw such an effect! They rose--the whole house rose--an
clapped, and cheered, and praised him to the skies; and one after
another, still clapping and shouting, they crowded forward, some with
moisture in their eyes, and wrung his hands, and said such glorious
things to him that he was clear overcome with pride and happiness, and
couldn't say a word, for his voice would have broken, sure. It was
splendid to see; and everybody said he had never come up to that speech
in his life before, and never could do it again. Eloquence is a power,
there is no question of that. Even old Jacques d'Arc was carried away,
for once in his life, and shouted out:
"It's all right, Joan--give him the porridge!"
She was embarrassed, and did not seem to know what to say, and so didn't
say anything. It was because she had given the man the porridge long ago
and he had already eaten it all up. When she was asked why she had not
waited until a decision was arrived at, she said the man's stomach was
very hungry, and it would not have been wise to wait, since she could not
tell what the decision would be. Now that was a good and thoughtful idea
for a child.
The man was not a rascal at all. He was a very good fellow, only he was
out of luck, and surely that was no crime at that time in France. Now
that his stomach was proved to be innocent, it was allowed to make itself
at home; and as soon as it was well filled and needed nothing more, the
man unwound his tongue and turned it loose, and it was really a noble one
to go. He had been in the wars for years, and the things he told and the
way he told them fired everybody's patriotism away up high, and set all
hearts to thumping and all pulses to leaping; then, before anybody
rightly knew how the change was made, he was leading us a sublime march
through the ancient glories of France, and in fancy we saw the titanic
forms of the twelve paladins rise out of the mists of the past and face
their fate; we heard the tread of the innumerable hosts sweeping down to
shut them in; we saw this human tide flow and ebb, ebb and flow, and
waste away before that little band of heroes; we saw each detail pass
before us of that most stupendous, most disastrous, yet most adored and
glorious day in French legendary history; here and there and yonder,
across that vast field of the dead and dying, we saw this and that and
the other paladin dealing his prodigious blows with weary arm and failing
strength, and one by one we saw them fall, till only one remained--he
that was without peer, he whose name gives name to the Song of Songs, the
song which no Frenchman can hear and keep his feelings down and his pride
of country cool; then, grandest and pitifulest scene of all, we saw his
own pathetic death; and out stillness, as we sat with parted lips and
breathless, hanging upon this man's words, gave us a sense of the awful
stillness that reigned in that field of slaughter when that last
surviving soul had passed.
And now, in this solemn hush, the stranger gave Joan a pat or two on the
head and said:
"Little maid--whom God keep!--you have brought me from death to life this
night; now listen: here is your reward," and at that supreme time for
such a heart-melting, soul-rousing surprise, without another word he
lifted up the most noble and pathetic voice that was ever heard, and
began to pour out the great Song of Roland!
Think of that, with a French audience all stirred up and ready. Oh, where
was your spoken eloquence now! what was it to this! How fine he looked,
how stately, how inspired, as he stood there with that mighty chant
welling from his lips and his heart, his whole body transfigured, and his
rags along with it.
Everybody rose and stood while he sang, and their faces glowed and their
eyes burned; and the tears came and flowed don their cheeks and their
forms began to sway unconsciously to the swing of the song, and their
bosoms to heave and pant; and moanings broke out, and deep ejaculations;
and when the last verse was reached, and Roland lay dying, all alone,
with his face to the field and to his slain, lying there in heaps and
winrows, and took off and held up his gauntlet to God with his failing
hand, and breathed his beautiful prayer with his paling pips, all burst
out in sobs and wailings. But when the final great note died out and the
song was done, they all flung themselves in a body at the singer, stark
mad with love of him and love of France and pride in her great deeds and
old renown, and smothered him with their embracings; but Joan was there
first, hugged close to his breast, and covering his face with idolatrous
kisses.
The storm raged on outside, but that was no matter; this was the
stranger's home now, for as long as he might please.
Chapter 4 Joan Tames the Mad Man
ALL CHILDREN have nicknames, and we had ours. We got one apiece early,
and they stuck to us; but Joan was richer in this matter, for, as time
went on, she earned a second, and then a third, and so on, and we gave
them to her. First and last she had as many as half a dozen. Several of
these she never lost. Peasant-girls are bashful naturally; but she
surpassed the rule so far, and colored so easily, and was so easily
embarrassed in the presence of strangers, that we nicknamed her the
Bashful. We were all patriots, but she was called the Patriot, because
our warmest feeling for our country was cold beside hers. Also she was
called the Beautiful; and this was not merely because of the
extraordinary beauty of her face and form, but because of the loveliness
of her character. These names she kept, and one other--the Brave.
We grew along up, in that plodding and peaceful region, and got to be
good-sized boys and girls--big enough, in fact, to begin to know as much
about the wars raging perpetually to the west and north of us as our
elders, and also to feel as stirred up over the occasional news from
these red fields as they did. I remember certain of these days very
clearly. One Tuesday a crowd of us were romping and singing around the
Fairy Tree, and hanging garlands on it in memory of our lost little fairy
friends, when Little Mengette cried out:
"Look! What is that?"
When one exclaims like that in a way that shows astonishment and
apprehension, he gets attention. All the panting breasts and flushed
faces flocked together, and all the eager eyes were turned in one
direction--down the slope, toward the village.
"It's a black flag."
"A black flag! No--is it?"
"You can see for yourself that it is nothing else."
"It is a black flag, sure! Now, has any ever seen the like of that
before?"
"What can it mean?"
"Mean? It means something dreadful--what else?"
"That is nothing to the point; anybody knows that without the telling.
But what?--that is the question."
"It is a chance that he that bears it can answer as well as any that are
here, if you contain yourself till he comes."
"He runs well. Who is it?"
Some named one, some another; but presently all saw that it was Etienne
Roze, called the Sunflower, because he had yellow hair and a round
pock-marked face. His ancestors had been Germans some centuries ago. He
came straining up the slope, now and then projecting his flag-stick aloft
and giving his black symbol of woe a wave in the air, whilst all eyes
watched him, all tongues discussed him, and every heart beat faster and
faster with impatience to know his news. At last he sprang among us, and
struck his flag-stick into the ground, saying:
"There! Stand there and represent France while I get my breath. She needs
no other flag now."
All the giddy chatter stopped. It was as if one had announced a death. In
that chilly hush there was no sound audible but the panting of the
breath-blown boy. When he was presently able to speak, he said:
"Black news is come. A treaty has been made at Troyes between France and
the English and Burgundians. By it France is betrayed and delivered over,
tied hand and foot, to the enemy. It is the work of the Duke of Burgundy
and that she-devil, the Queen of France. It marries Henry of England to
Catharine of France--"
"Is not this a lie? Marries the daughter of France to the Butcher of
Agincourt? It is not to be believed. You have not heard aright."
"If you cannot believe that, Jacques d'Arc, then you have a difficult
task indeed before you, for worse is to come. Any child that is born of
that marriage--if even a girl--is to inherit the thrones of both England
and France, and this double ownership is to remain with its posterity
forever!"
"Now that is certainly a lie, for it runs counter to our Salic law, and
so is not legal and cannot have effect," said Edmond Aubrey, called the
Paladin, because of the armies he was always going to eat up some day. He
would have said more, but he was drowned out by the clamors of the
others, who all burst into a fury over this feature of the treaty, all
talking at once and nobody hearing anybody, until presently Haumette
persuaded them to be still, saying:
"It is not fair to break him up so in his tale; pray let him go on. You
find fault with his history because it seems to be lies. That were reason
for satisfaction--that kind of lies--not discontent. Tell the rest,
Etienne."
"There is but this to tell: Our King, Charles VI., is to reign until he
dies, then Henry V. of England is to be Regent of France until a child of
his shall be old enough to--"
"That man is to reign over us--the Butcher? It is lies! all lies!" cried
the Paladin. "Besides, look you--what becomes of our Dauphin? What says
the treaty about him?"
"Nothing. It takes away his throne and makes him an outcast."
Then everybody shouted at once and said the news was a lie; and all began
to get cheerful again, saying, "Our King would have to sign the treaty to
make it good; and that he would not do, seeing how it serves his own
son."
But the Sunflower said: "I will ask you this: Would the Queen sign a
treaty disinheriting her son?"
"That viper? Certainly. Nobody is talking of her. Nobody expects better
of her. There is no villainy she will stick at, if it feed her spite; and
she hates her son. Her signing it is of no consequence. The King must
sign."
"I will ask you another thing. What is the King's condition? Mad, isn't
he?"
"Yes, and his people love him all the more for it. It brings him near to
them by his sufferings; and pitying him makes them love him."
"You say right, Jacques d'Arc. Well, what would you of one that is mad?
Does he know what he does? No. Does he do what others make him do? Yes.
Now, then, I tell you he has signed the treaty."
"Who made him do it?"
"You know, without my telling. The Queen."
Then there was another uproar--everybody talking at once, and all heaping
execrations upon the Queen's head. Finally Jacques d'Arc said:
"But many reports come that are not true. Nothing so shameful as this has
ever come before, nothing that cuts so deep, nothing that has dragged
France so low; therefore there is hope that this tale is but another idle
rumor. Where did you get it?"
The color went out of his sister Joan's face. She dreaded the answer; and
her instinct was right.
"The cur, of Maxey brought it."
There was a general gasp. We knew him, you see, for a trusty man.
"Did he believe it?"
The hearts almost stopped beating. Then came the answer:
"He did. And that is not all. He said he knew it to be true."
Some of the girls began to sob; the boys were struck silent. The distress
in Joan's face was like that which one sees in the face of a dumb animal
that has received a mortal hurt. The animal bears it, making no
complaint; she bore it also, saying no word. Her brother Jacques put his
hand on her head and caressed her hair to indicate his sympathy, and she
gathered the hand to her lips and kissed it for thanks, not saying
anything. Presently the reaction came, and the boys began to talk. Noel
Rainguesson said:
"Oh, are we never going to be men! We do grow along so slowly, and France
never needed soldiers as she needs them now, to wipe out this black
insult."
"I hate youth!" said Pierre Morel, called the Dragon-fly because his eyes
stuck out so. "You've always got to wait, and wait, and wait--and here
are the great wars wasting away for a hundred years, and you never get a
chance. If I could only be a soldier now!"
"As for me, I'm not going to wait much longer," said the Paladin; "and
when I do start you'll hear from me, I promise you that. There are some
who, in storming a castle, prefer to be in the rear; but as for me, give
me the front or none; I will have none in front of me but the officers."
Even the girls got the war spirit, and Marie Dupont said:
"I would I were a man; I would start this minute!" and looked very proud
of herself, and glanced about for applause.
"So would I," said Cecile Letellier, sniffing the air like a war-horse
that smells the battle; "I warrant you I would not turn back from the
field though all England were in front of me."
"Pooh!" said the Paladin; "girls can brag, but that's all they are good
for. Let a thousand of them come face to face with a handful of soldiers
once, if you want to see what running is like. Here's little Joan--next
she'll be threatening to go for a soldier!"
The idea was so funny, and got such a good laugh, that the Paladin gave
it another trial, and said: "Why you can just see her!--see her plunge
into battle like any old veteran. Yes, indeed; and not a poor shabby
common soldier like us, but an officer--an officer, mind you, with armor
on, and the bars of a steel helmet to blush behind and hide her
embarrassment when she finds an army in front of her that she hasn't been
introduced to. An officer? Why, she'll be a captain! A captain, I tell
you, with a hundred men at her back--or maybe girls. Oh, no
common-soldier business for her! And, dear me, when she starts for that
other army, you'll think there's a hurricane blowing it away!"
Well, he kept it up like that till he made their sides ache with
laughing; which was quite natural, for certainly it was a very funny
idea--at that time--I mean, the idea of that gentle little creature, that
wouldn't hurt a fly, and couldn't bear the sight of blood, and was so
girlish and shrinking in all ways, rushing into battle with a gang of
soldiers at her back. Poor thing, she sat there confused and ashamed to
be so laughed at; and yet at that very minute there was something about
to happen which would change the aspect of things, and make those young
people see that when it comes to laughing, the person that laughs last
has the best chance. For just then a face which we all knew and all
feared projected itself from behind the Fairy Tree, and the thought that
shot through us all was, crazy Benoist has gotten loose from his cage,
and we are as good as dead! This ragged and hairy and horrible creature
glided out from behind the tree, and raised an ax as he came. We all
broke and fled, this way and that, the girls screaming and crying. No,
not all; all but Joan. She stood up and faced the man, and remained so.
As we reached the wood that borders the grassy clearing and jumped into
its shelter, two or three of us glanced back to see if Benoist was
gaining on us, and that is what we saw--Joan standing, and the maniac
gliding stealthily toward her with his ax lifted. The sight was
sickening. We stood where we were, trembling and not able to move. I did
not want to see the murder done, and yet I could not take my eyes away.
Now I saw Joan step forward to meet the man, though I believed my eyes
must be deceiving me. Then I saw him stop. He threatened her with his ax,
as if to warn her not to come further, but she paid no heed, but went
steadily on, until she was right in front of him--right under his ax.
Then she stopped, and seemed to begin to talk with him. It made me sick,
yes, giddy, and everything swam around me, and I could not see anything
for a time--whether long or brief I do not know. When this passed and I
looked again, Joan was walking by the man's side toward the village,
holding him by his hand. The ax was in her other hand.
One by one the boys and girls crept out, and we stood there gazing,
open-mouthed, till those two entered the village and were hid from sight.
It was then that we named her the Brave.
We left the black flag there to continue its mournful office, for we had
other matter to think of now. We started for the village on a run, to
give warning, and get Joan out of her peril; though for one, after seeing
what I had seen, it seemed to me that while Joan had the ax the man's
chance was not the best of the two. When we arrived the danger was past,
the madman was in custody. All the people were flocking to the little
square in front of the church to talk and exclaim and wonder over the
event, and it even made the town forget the black news of the treaty for
two or three hours.
All the women kept hugging and kissing Joan, and praising her, and
crying, and the men patted her on the head and said they wished she was a
man, they would send her to the wars and never doubt but that she would
strike some blows that would be heard of. She had to tear herself away
and go and hide, this glory was so trying to her diffidence.
Of course the people began to ask us for the particulars. I was so
ashamed that I made an excuse to the first comer, and got privately away
and went back to the Fairy Tree, to get relief from the embarrassment of
those questionings. There I found Joan, but she was there to get relief
from the embarrassment of glory. One by one the others shirked the
inquirers and joined us in our refuge. Then we gathered around Joan, and
asked her how she had dared to do that thing. She was very modest about
it, and said:
"You make a great thing of it, but you mistake; it was not a great
matter. It was not as if I had been a stranger to the man. I know him,
and have known him long; and he knows me, and likes me. I have fed him
through the bars of his cage many times; and last December, when they
chopped off two of his fingers to remind him to stop seizing and wounding
people passing by, I dressed his hand every day till it was well again."
"That is all well enough," said Little Mengette, "but he is a madman,
dear, and so his likings and his gratitude and friendliness go for
nothing when his rage is up. You did a perilous thing."
"Of course you did," said the Sunflower. "Didn't he threaten to kill you
with the ax?"
"Yes."
"Didn't he threaten you more than once?"
"Yes."
"Didn't you feel afraid?"
"No--at least not much--very little."
"Why didn't you?"
She thought a moment, then said, quite simply:
"I don't know."
It made everybody laugh. Then the Sunflower said it was like a lamb
trying to think out how it had come to eat a wolf, but had to give it up.
Cecile Letellier asked, "Why didn't you run when we did?"
"Because it was necessary to get him to his cage; else he would kill some
one. Then he would come to the like harm himself."
It is noticeable that this remark, which implies that Joan was entirely
forgetful of herself and her own danger, and had thought and wrought for
the preservation of other people alone, was not challenged, or
criticized, or commented upon by anybody there, but was taken by all as
matter of course and true. It shows how clearly her character was
defined, and how well it was known and established.
There was silence for a time, and perhaps we were all thinking of the
same thing--namely, what a poor figure we had cut in that adventure as
contrasted with Joan's performance. I tried to think up some good way of
explaining why I had run away and left a little girl at the mercy of a
maniac armed with an ax, but all of the explanations that offered
themselves to me seemed so cheap and shabby that I gave the matter up and
remained still. But others were less wise. Noel Rainguesson fidgeted
awhile, then broke out with a remark which showed what his mind had been
running on:
"The fact is, I was taken by surprise. That is the reason. If I had had a
moment to think, I would no more have thought of running that I would
think of running from a baby. For, after all, what is Theophile Benoist,
that I should seem to be afraid of him? Pooh! the idea of being afraid of
that poor thing! I only wish he would come along now--I'd show you!"
"So do I!" cried Pierre Morel. "If I wouldn't make him climb this tree
quicker than--well, you'd see what I would do! Taking a person by
surprise, that way--why, I never meant to run; not in earnest, I mean. I
never thought of running in earnest; I only wanted to have some fun, and
when I saw Joan standing there, and him threatening her, it was all I
could do to restrain myself from going there and just tearing the livers
and lights out of him. I wanted to do it bad enough, and if it was to do
over again, I would! If ever he comes fooling around me again, I'll--"
"Oh, hush!" said the Paladin, breaking in with an air of disdain; "the
way you people talk, a person would think there's something heroic about
standing up and facing down that poor remnant of a man. Why, it's
nothing! There's small glory to be got in facing him down, I should say.
Why, I wouldn't want any better fun than to face down a hundred like him.
If he was to come along here now, I would walk up to him just as I am
now--I wouldn't care if he had a thousand axes--and say--"
And so he went on and on, telling the brave things he would say and the
wonders he would do; and the others put in a word from time to time,
describing over again the gory marvels they would do if ever that madman
ventured to cross their path again, for next time they would be ready for
him, and would soon teach him that if he thought he could surprise them
twice because he had surprised them once, he would find himself very
seriously mistaken, that's all.
And so, in the end, they all got back their self-respect; yes, and even
added somewhat to it; indeed when the sitting broke up they had a finer
opinion of themselves than they had ever had before.
Chapter 5 Domremy Pillaged and Burned
THEY WERE peaceful and pleasant, those young and smoothly flowing days of
ours; that is, that was the case as a rule, we being remote from the seat
of war; but at intervals roving bands approached near enough for us to
see the flush in the sky at night which marked where they were burning
some farmstead or village, and we all knew, or at least felt, that some
day they would come yet nearer, and we should have our turn. This dull
dread lay upon our spirits like a physical weight. It was greatly
augmented a couple of years after the Treaty of Troyes.
It was truly a dismal year for France. One day we had been over to have
one of our occasional pitched battles with those hated Burgundian boys of
the village of Maxey, and had been whipped, and were arriving on our side
of the river after dark, bruised and weary, when we heard the bell
ringing the tocsin. We ran all the way, and when we got to the square we
found it crowded with the excited villagers, and weirdly lighted by
smoking and flaring torches.
On the steps of the church stood a stranger, a Burgundian priest, who was
telling the people new which made them weep, and rave, and rage, and
curse, by turns. He said our old mad King was dead, and that now we and
France and the crown were the property of an English baby lying in his
cradle in London. And he urged us to give that child our allegiance, and
be its faithful servants and well-wishers; and said we should now have a
strong and stable government at last, and that in a little time the
English armies would start on their last march, and it would be a brief
one, for all that it would need to do would be to conquer what odds and
ends of our country yet remained under that rare and almost forgotten
rag, the banner of France.
The people stormed and raged at him, and you could see dozens of them
stretch their fists above the sea of torch-lighted faces and shake them
at him; and it was all a wild picture, and stirring to look at; and the
priest was a first-rate part of it, too, for he stood there in the strong
glare and looked down on those angry people in the blandest and most
indifferent way, so that while you wanted to burn him at the stake, you
still admired the aggravating coolness of him. And his winding-up was the
coolest thing of all. For he told them how, at the funeral of our old
King, the French King-at-Arms had broken his staff of office over the
coffin of "Charles VI. and his dynasty," at the same time saying, in a
loud voice, "Good grant long life to Henry, King of France and England,
our sovereign lord!" and then he asked them to join him in a hearty Amen
to that! The people were white with wrath, and it tied their tongues for
the moment, and they could not speak. But Joan was standing close by, and
she looked up in his face, and said in her sober, earnest way:
"I would I might see thy head struck from thy body!"--then, after a
pause, and crossing herself--"if it were the will of God."
This is worth remembering, and I will tell you why: it is the only harsh
speech Joan ever uttered in her life. When I shall have revealed to you
the storms she went through, and the wrongs and persecutions, then you
will see that it was wonderful that she said but one bitter thing while
she lived.
From the day that that dreary news came we had one scare after another,
the marauders coming almost to our doors every now and then; so that we
lived in ever-increasing apprehension, and yet were somehow mercifully
spared from actual attack. But at last our turn did really come. This was
in the spring of '28. The Burgundians swarmed in with a great noise, in
the middle of a dark night, and we had to jump up and fly for our lives.
We took the road to Neufchateau, and rushed along in the wildest
disorder, everybody trying to get ahead, and thus the movements of all
were impeded; but Joan had a cool head--the only cool head there--and she
took command and brought order out of that chaos. She did her work
quickly and with decision and despatch, and soon turned the panic flight
into a quite steady-going march. You will grant that for so young a
person, and a girl at that, this was a good piece of work.
She was sixteen now, shapely and graceful, and of a beauty so
extraordinary that I might allow myself any extravagance of language in
describing it and yet have no fear of going beyond the truth. There was
in her face a sweetness and serenity and purity that justly reflected her
spiritual nature. She was deeply religious, and this is a thing which
sometimes gives a melancholy cast to a person's countenance, but it was
not so in her case. Her religion made her inwardly content and joyous;
and if she was troubled at times, and showed the pain of it in her face
and bearing, it came of distress for her country; no part of it was
chargeable to her religion.
A considerable part of our village was destroyed, and when it became safe
for us to venture back there we realized what other people had been
suffering in all the various quarters of France for many years--yes,
decades of years. For the first time we saw wrecked and smoke-blackened
homes, and in the lanes and alleys carcasses of dumb creatures that had
been slaughtered in pure wantonness--among them calves and lambs that had
been pets of the children; and it was pity to see the children lament
over them.
And then, the taxes, the taxes! Everybody thought of that. That burden
would fall heavy now in the commune's crippled condition, and all faces
grew long with the thought of it. Joan said:
"Paying taxes with naught to pay them with is what the rest of France has
been doing these many years, but we never knew the bitterness of that
before. We shall know it now."
And so she went on talking about it and growing more and more troubled
about it, until one could see that it was filling all her mind.
At last we came upon a dreadful object. It was the madman--hacked and
stabbed to death in his iron cage in the corner of the square. It was a
bloody and dreadful sight. Hardly any of us young people had ever seen a
man before who had lost his life by violence; so this cadaver had an
awful fascination for us; we could not take our eyes from it. I mean, it
had that sort of fascination for all of us but one. That one was Joan.
She turned away in horror, and could not be persuaded to go near it
again. There--it is a striking reminder that we are but creatures of use
and custom; yes, and it is a reminder, too, of how harshly and unfairly
fate deals with us sometimes. For it was so ordered that the very ones
among us who were most fascinated with mutilated and bloody death were to
live their lives in peace, while that other, who had a native and deep
horror of it, must presently go forth and have it as a familiar spectacle
every day on the field of battle.
You may well believe that we had plenty of matter for talk now, since the
raiding of our village seemed by long odds the greatest event that had
really ever occurred in the world; for although these dull peasants may
have thought they recognized the bigness of some of the previous
occurrences that had filtered from the world's history dimly into their
minds, the truth is that they hadn't. One biting little fact, visible to
their eyes of flesh and felt in their own personal vitals, became at once
more prodigious to them than the grandest remote episode in the world's
history which they had got at second hand and by hearsay. It amuses me
now when I recall how our elders talked then. The fumed and fretted in a
fine fashion.
"Ah, yes," said old Jacques d'Arc, "things are come to a pretty pass,
indeed! The King must be informed of this. It is time that he cease from
idleness and dreaming, and get at his proper business." He meant our
young disinherited King, the hunted refugee, Charles VII.
"You way well," said the maire. "He should be informed, and that at once.
It is an outrage that such things would be permitted. Why, we are not
safe in our beds, and he taking his ease yonder. It shall be made known,
indeed it shall--all France shall hear of it!"
To hear them talk, one would have imagined that all the previous ten
thousand sackings and burnings in France had been but fables, and this
one the only fact. It is always the way; words will answer as long as it
is only a person's neighbor who is in trouble, but when that person gets
into trouble himself, it is time that the King rise up and do something.
The big event filled us young people with talk, too. We let it flow in a
steady stream while we tended the flocks. We were beginning to feel
pretty important now, for I was eighteen and the other youths were from
one to four years older--young men, in fact. One day the Paladin was
arrogantly criticizing the patriot generals of France and said:
"Look at Dunois, Bastard of Orleans--call him a general! Just put me in
his place once--never mind what I would do, it is not for me to say, I
have no stomach for talk, my way is to act and let others do the
talking--but just put me in his place once, that's all! And look at
Saintrailles--pooh! and that blustering La Hire, now what a general that
is!"
It shocked everybody to hear these great names so flippantly handled, for
to us these renowned soldiers were almost gods. In their far-off splendor
they rose upon our imaginations dim and huge, shadowy and awful, and it
was a fearful thing to hear them spoken of as if they were mere men, and
their acts open to comment and criticism. The color rose in Joan's face,
and she said:
"I know not how any can be so hardy as to use such words regarding these
sublime men, who are the very pillars of the French state, supporting it
with their strength and preserving it at daily cost of their blood. As
for me, I could count myself honored past all deserving if I might be
allowed but the privilege of looking upon them once--at a distance, I
mean, for it would not become one of my degree to approach them too
near."
The Paladin was disconcerted for a moment, seeing by the faces around him
that Joan had put into words what the others felt, then he pulled his
complacency together and fell to fault-finding again. Joan's brother Jean
said:
"If you don't like what our generals do, why don't you go to the great
wars yourself and better their work? You are always talking about going
to the wars, but you don't go."
"Look you," said the Paladin, "it is easy to say that. Now I will tell
you why I remain chafing here in a bloodless tranquillity which my
reputation teaches you is repulsive to my nature. I do not go because I
am not a gentleman. That is the whole reason. What can one private
soldier do in a contest like this? Nothing. He is not permitted to rise
from the ranks. If I were a gentleman would I remain here? Not one
moment. I can save France--ah, you may laugh, but I know what is in me, I
know what is hid under this peasant cap. I can save France, and I stand
ready to do it, but not under these present conditions. If they want me,
let them send for me; otherwise, let them take the consequences; I shall
not budge but as an officer."
"Alas, poor France--France is lost!" said Pierre d'Arc.
"Since you sniff so at others, why don't you go to the wars yourself,
Pierre d'Arc?"
"Oh, I haven't been sent for, either. I am no more a gentleman than you.
Yet I will go; I promise to go. I promise to go as a private under your
orders--when you are sent for."
They all laughed, and the Dragon-fly said:
"So soon? Then you need to begin to get ready; you might be called for in
five years--who knows? Yes, in my opinion you'll march for the wars in
five years."
"He will go sooner," said Joan. She said it in a low voice and musingly,
but several heard it.
"How do you know that, Joan?" said the Dragon-fly, with a surprised look.
But Jean d'Arc broke in and said:
"I want to go myself, but as I am rather young yet, I also will wait, and
march when the Paladin is sent for."
"No," said Joan, "he will go with Pierre."
She said it as one who talks to himself aloud without knowing it, and
none heard it but me. I glanced at her and saw that her knitting-needles
were idle in her hands, and that her face had a dreamy and absent look in
it. There were fleeting movements of her lips as if she might be
occasionally saying parts of sentences to herself. But there was no
sound, for I was the nearest person to her and I heard nothing. But I set
my ears open, for those two speeches had affected me uncannily, I being
superstitious and easily troubled by any little thing of a strange and
unusual sort.
Noel Rainguesson said:
"There is one way to let France have a chance for her salvation. We've
got one gentleman in the commune, at any rate. Why can't the Scholar
change name and condition with the Paladin? Then he can be an officer.
France will send for him then, and he will sweep these English and
Burgundian armies into the sea like flies."
I was the Scholar. That was my nickname, because I could read and write.
There was a chorus of approval, and the Sunflower said:
"That is the very thing--it settles every difficulty. The Sieur de Conte
will easily agree to that. Yes, he will march at the back of Captain
Paladin and die early, covered with common-soldier glory."
"He will march with Jean and Pierre, and live till these wars are
forgotten," Joan muttered; "and at the eleventh hour Noel and the Paladin
will join these, but not of their own desire." The voice was so low that
I was not perfectly sure that these were the words, but they seemed to
be. It makes one feel creepy to hear such things.
"Come, now," Noel continued, "it's all arranged; there's nothing to do
but organize under the Paladin's banner and go forth and rescue France.
You'll all join?"
All said yes, except Jacques d'Arc, who said:
"I'll ask you to excuse me. It is pleasant to talk war, and I am with you
there, and I've always thought I should go soldiering about this time,
but the look of our wrecked village and that carved-up and bloody madman
have taught me that I am not made for such work and such sights. I could
never be at home in that trade. Face swords and the big guns and death?
It isn't in me. No, no; count me out. And besides, I'm the eldest son,
and deputy prop and protector of the family. Since you are going to carry
Jean and Pierre to the wars, somebody must be left behind to take care of
our Joan and her sister. I shall stay at home, and grow old in peace and
tranquillity."
"He will stay at home, but not grow old," murmured Joan.
The talk rattled on in the gay and careless fashion privileged to youth,
and we got the Paladin to map out his campaigns and fight his battles and
win his victories and extinguish the English and put our King upon his
throne and set his crown upon his head. Then we asked him what he was
going to answer when the King should require him to name his reward. The
Paladin had it all arranged in his head, and brought it out promptly:
"He shall give me a dukedom, name me premier peer, and make me Hereditary
Lord High Constable of France."
"And marry you to a princess--you're not going to leave that out, are
you?"
The Paladin colored a trifle, and said, brusquely:
"He may keep his princesses--I can marry more to my taste."
Meaning Joan, though nobody suspected it at that time. If any had, the
Paladin would have been finely ridiculed for his vanity. There was no fit
mate in that village for Joan of Arc. Every one would have said that.
In turn, each person present was required to say what reward he would
demand of the King if he could change places with the Paladin and do the
wonders the Paladin was going to do. The answers were given in fun, and
each of us tried to outdo his predecessors in the extravagance of the
reward he would claim; but when it came to Joan's turn, and they rallied
her out of her dreams and asked her to testify, they had to explain to
her what the question was, for her thought had been absent, and she had
heard none of this latter part of our talk. She supposed they wanted a
serious answer, and she gave it. She sat considering some moments, then
she said:
"If the Dauphin, out of his grace and nobleness, should say to me, 'Now
that I am rich and am come to my own again, choose and have,' I should
kneel and ask him to give command that our village should nevermore be
taxed."
It was so simple and out of her heart that it touched us and we did not
laugh, but fell to thinking. We did not laugh; but there came a day when
we remembered that speech with a mournful pride, and were glad that we
had not laughed, perceiving then how honest her words had been, and
seeing how faithfully she made them good when the time came, asking just
that boon of the King and refusing to take even any least thing for
herself.
Chapter 6 Joan and Archangel Michael
ALL THROUGH her childhood and up to the middle of her fourteenth year,
Joan had been the most light-hearted creature and the merriest in the
village, with a hop-skip-and-jump gait and a happy and catching laugh;
and this disposition, supplemented by her warm and sympathetic nature and
frank and winning ways, had made her everybody's pet. She had been a hot
patriot all this time, and sometimes the war news had sobered her spirits
and wrung her heart and made her acquainted with tears, but always when
these interruptions had run their course her spirits rose and she was her
old self again.
But now for a whole year and a half she had been mainly grave; not
melancholy, but given to thought, abstraction, dreams. She was carrying
France upon her heart, and she found the burden not light. I knew that
this was her trouble, but others attributed her abstraction to religious
ecstasy, for she did not share her thinkings with the village at large,
yet gave me glimpses of them, and so I knew, better than the rest, what
was absorbing her interest. Many a time the idea crossed my mind that she
had a secret--a secret which she was keeping wholly to herself, as well
from me as from the others. This idea had come to me because several
times she had cut a sentence in two and changed the subject when
apparently she was on the verge of a revelation of some sort. I was to
find this secret out, but not just yet.
The day after the conversation which I have been reporting we were
together in the pastures and fell to talking about France, as usual. For
her sake I had always talked hopefully before, but that was mere lying,
for really there was not anything to hang a rag of hope for France upon.
Now it was such a pain to lie to her, and cost me such shame to offer
this treachery to one so snow-pure from lying and treachery, and even
from suspicion of such baseness in others, as she was, that I was
resolved to face about now and begin over again, and never insult her
more with deception. I started on the new policy by saying--still opening
up with a small lie, of course, for habit is habit, and not to be flung
out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time:
"Joan, I have been thinking the thing all over last night, and have
concluded that we have been in the wrong all this time; that the case of
France is desperate; that it has been desperate ever since Agincourt; and
that to-day it is more than desperate, it is hopeless."
I did not look her in the face while I was saying it; it could not be
expected of a person. To break her heart, to crush her hope with a so
frankly brutal speech as that, without one charitable soft place in
it--it seemed a shameful thing, and it was. But when it was out, the
weight gone, and my conscience rising to the surface, I glanced at her
face to see the result.
There was none to see. At least none that I was expecting. There was a
barely perceptible suggestion of wonder in her serious eyes, but that was
all; and she said, in her simple and placid way:
"The case of France hopeless? Why should you think that? Tell me."
It is a most pleasant thing to find that what you thought would inflict a
hurt upon one whom you honor, has not done it. I was relieved now, and
could say all my say without any furtivenesses and without embarrassment.
So I began:
"Let us put sentiment and patriotic illusions aside, and look at the
facts in the face. What do they say? They speak as plainly as the figures
in a merchant's account-book. One has only to add the two columns up to
see that the French house is bankrupt, that one-half of its property is
already in the English sheriff's hands and the other half in
nobody's--except those of irresponsible raiders and robbers confessing
allegiance to nobody. Our King is shut up with his favorites and fools in
inglorious idleness and poverty in a narrow little patch of the
kingdom--a sort of back lot, as one may say--and has no authority there
or anywhere else, hasn't a farthing to his name, nor a regiment of
soldiers; he is not fighting, he is not intending to fight, he means to
make no further resistance; in truth, there is but one thing that he is
intending to do--give the whole thing up, pitch his crown into the sewer,
and run away to Scotland. There are the facts. Are they correct?"
"Yes, they are correct."
"Then it is as I have said: one needs but to add them together in order
to realize what they mean."
She asked, in an ordinary, level tone:
"What--that the case of France is hopeless?"
"Necessarily. In face of these facts, doubt of it is impossible."
"How can you say that? How can you feel like that?"
"How can I? How could I think or feel in any other way, in the
circumstances? Joan, with these fatal figures before, you, have you
really any hope for France--really and actually?"
"Hope--oh, more than that! France will win her freedom and keep it. Do
not doubt it."
It seemed to me that her clear intellect must surely be clouded to-day.
It must be so, or she would see that those figures could mean only one
thing. Perhaps if I marshaled them again she would see. So I said:
"Joan, your heart, which worships France, is beguiling your head. You are
not perceiving the importance of these figures. Here--I want to make a
picture of them, her eon the ground with a stick. Now, this rough outline
is France. Through its middle, east and west, I draw a river."
"Yes, the Loire."
"Now, then, this whole northern half of the country is in the tight grip
of the English."
"Yes."
"And this whole southern half is really in nobody's hands at all--as our
King confesses by meditating desertion and flight to a foreign land.
England has armies here; opposition is dead; she can assume full
possession whenever she may choose. In very truth, all France is gone,
France is already lost, France has ceased to exist. What was France is
now but a British province. Is this true?"
Her voice was low, and just touched with emotion, but distinct:
"Yes, it is true."
"Very well. Now add this clinching fact, and surely the sum is complete:
When have French soldiers won a victory? Scotch soldiers, under the
French flag, have won a barren fight or two a few years back, but I am
speaking of French ones. Since eight thousand Englishmen nearly
annihilated sixty thousand Frenchmen a dozen years ago at Agincourt,
French courage has been paralyzed. And so it is a common saying to-day
that if you confront fifty French soldiers with five English ones, the
French will run."
"It is a pity, but even these things are true."
"Then certainly the day for hoping is past."
I believed the case would be clear to her now. I thought it could not
fail to be clear to her, and that she would say, herself, that there was
no longer any ground for hope. But I was mistaken; and disappointed also.
She said, without any doubt in her tone:
"France will rise again. You shall see."
"Rise?--with this burden of English armies on her back!"
"She will cast it off; she will trample it under foot!" This with spirit.
"Without soldiers to fight with?"
"The drums will summon them. They will answer, and they will march."
"March to the rear, as usual?"
"No; to the front--ever to the front--always to the front! You shall
see."
"And the pauper King?"
"He will mount his throne--he will wear his crown."
"Well, of a truth this makes one's head dizzy. Why, if I could believe
that in thirty years from now the English domination would be broken and
the French monarch's head find itself hooped with a real crown of
sovereignty--"
"Both will have happened before two years are sped."
"Indeed? and who is going to perform all these sublime impossibilities?"
"God."
It was a reverent low note, but it rang clear.
What could have put those strange ideas in her head? This question kept
running in my mind during two or three days. It was inevitable that I
should think of madness. What other way was there to account for such
things? Grieving and brooding over the woes of France had weakened that
strong mind, and filled it with fantastic phantoms--yes, that must be it.
But I watched her, and tested her, and it was not so. Her eye was clear
and sane, her ways were natural, her speech direct and to the point. No,
there was nothing the matter with her mind; it was still the soundest in
the village and the best. She went on thinking for others, planning for
others, sacrificing herself for others, just as always before. She went
on ministering to her sick and to her poor, and still stood ready to give
the wayfarer her bed and content herself with the floor. There was a
secret somewhere, but madness was not the key to it. This was plain.
Now the key did presently come into my hands, and the way that it
happened was this. You have heard all the world talk of this matter which
I am about to speak of, but you have not heard an eyewitness talk of it
before.
I was coming from over the ridge, one day--it was the 15th of May,
'28--and when I got to the edge of the oak forest and was about to step
out of it upon the turfy open space in which the haunted beech tree
stood, I happened to cast a glance from cover, first--then I took a step
backward, and stood in the shelter and concealment of the foliage. For I
had caught sight of Joan, and thought I would devise some sort of playful
surprise for her. Think of it--that trivial conceit was neighbor, with
but a scarcely measurable interval of time between, to an event destined
to endure forever in histories and songs.
The day was overcast, and all that grassy space wherein the Tree stood
lay in a soft rich shadow. Joan sat on a natural seat formed by gnarled
great roots of the Tree. Her hands lay loosely, one reposing in the
other, in her lap. Her head was bent a little toward the ground, and her
air was that of one who is lost to thought, steeped in dreams, and not
conscious of herself or of the world. And now I saw a most strange thing,
for I saw a white shadow come slowly gliding along the grass toward the
Tree. It was of grand proportions--a robed form, with wings--and the
whiteness of this shadow was not like any other whiteness that we know
of, except it be the whiteness of lightnings, but even the lightnings are
not so intense as it was, for one cal look at them without hurt, whereas
this brilliancy was so blinding that in pained my eyes and brought the
water into them. I uncovered my head, perceiving that I was in the
presence of something not of this world. My breath grew faint and
difficult, because of the terror and the awe that possessed me.
Another strange thing. The wood had been silent--smitten with that deep
stillness which comes when a storm-cloud darkens a forest, and the wild
creatures lose heart and are afraid; but now all the birds burst forth
into song, and the joy, the rapture, the ecstasy of it was beyond belief;
and was so eloquent and so moving, withal, that it was plain it was an
act of worship. With the first note of those birds Joan cast herself upon
her knees, and bent her head low and crossed her hands upon her breast.
She had not seen the shadow yet. Had the song of the birds told her it
was coming? It had that look to me. Then the like of this must have
happened before. Yes, there might be no doubt of that.
The shadow approached Joan slowly; the extremity of it reached her,
flowed over her, clothed her in its awful splendor. In that immortal
light her face, only humanly beautiful before, became divine; flooded
with that transforming glory her mean peasant habit was become like to
the raiment of the sun-clothed children of God as we see them thronging
the terraces of the Throne in our dreams and imaginings.
Presently she rose and stood, with her head still bowed a little, and
with her arms down and the ends of her fingers lightly laced together in
front of her; and standing so, all drenched with that wonderful light,
and yet apparently not knowing it, she seemed to listen--but I heard
nothing. After a little she raised her head, and looked up as one might
look up toward the face of a giant, and then clasped her hands and lifted
them high, imploringly, and began to plead. I heard some of the words. I
heard her say:
"But I am so young! oh, so young to leave my mother and my home and go
out into the strange world to undertake a thing so great! Ah, how can I
talk with men, be comrade with men?--soldiers! It would give me over to
insult, and rude usage, and contempt. How can I go to the great wars, and
lead armies?--I a girl, and ignorant of such things, knowing nothing of
arms, nor how to mount a horse, nor ride it. . . . Yet--if it is
commanded--"
Her voice sank a little, and was broken by sobs, and I made out no more
of her words. Then I came to myself. I reflected that I had been
intruding upon a mystery of God--and what might my punishment be? I was
afraid, and went deeper into the wood. Then I carved a mark in the bark
of a tree, saying to myself, it may be that I am dreaming and have not
seen this vision at all. I will come again, when I know that I am awake
and not dreaming, and see if this mark is still here; then I shall know.
Chapter 7 She Delivers the Divine Command
I HEARD my name called. It was Joan's voice. It startled me, for how
could she know I was there? I said to myself, it is part of the dream; it
is all dream--voice, vision and all; the fairies have done this. So I
crossed myself and pronounced the name of God, to break the enchantment.
I knew I was awake now and free from the spell, for no spell can
withstand this exorcism. Then I heard my name called again, and I stepped
at once from under cover, and there indeed was Joan, but not looking as
she had looked in the dream. For she was not crying now, but was looking
as she had used to look a year and a half before, when her heart was
light and her spirits high. Her old-time energy and fire were back, and a
something like exaltation showed itself in her face and bearing. It was
almost as if she had been in a trance all that time and had come awake
again. Really, it was just as if she had been away and lost, and was come
back to us at last; and I was so glad that I felt like running to call
everybody and have them flock around her and give her welcome. I ran to
her excited and said:
"Ah, Joan, I've got such a wonderful thing to tell you about! You would
never imagine it. I've had a dream, and in the dream I saw you right here
where you are standing now, and--"
But she put up her hand and said:
"It was not a dream."
It gave me a shock, and I began to feel afraid again.
"Not a dream?" I said, "how can you know about it, Joan?"
"Are you dreaming now?"
"I--I suppose not. I think I am not."
"Indeed you are not. I know you are not. And yow were not dreaming when
you cut the mark in the tree."
I felt myself turning cold with fright, for now I knew of a certainty
that I had not been dreaming, but had really been in the presence of a
dread something not of this world. Then I remembered that my sinful feet
were upon holy ground--the ground where that celestial shadow had rested.
I moved quickly away, smitten to the bones with fear. Joan followed, and
said:
"Do not be afraid; indeed there is no need. Come with me. We will sit by
the spring and I will tell you all my secret."
When she was ready to begin, I checked her and said:
"First tell me this. You could not see me in the wood; how did you know I
cut a mark in the tree?"
"Wait a little; I will soon come to that; then you will see."
"But tell me one thing now; what was that awful shadow that I saw?"
"I will tell you, but do not be disturbed; you are not in danger. It was
the shadow of an archangel--Michael, the chief and lord of the armies of
heaven."
I could but cross myself and tremble for having polluted that ground with
my feet.
"You were not afraid, Joan? Did you see his face--did you see his form?"
"Yes; I was not afraid, because this was not the first time. I was afraid
the first time."
"When was that, Joan?"
"It is nearly three years ago now."
"So long? Have you seen him many times?"
"Yes, many times."
"It is this, then, that has changed you; it was this that made you
thoughtful and not as you were before. I see it now. Why did you not tell
us about it?"
"It was not permitted. It is permitted now, and soon I shall tell all.
But only you, now. It must remain a secret for a few days still."
"Has none seen that white shadow before but me?"
"No one. It has fallen upon me before when you and others were present,
but none could see it. To-day it has been otherwise, and I was told why;
but it will not be visible again to any."
"It was a sign to me, then--and a sign with a meaning of some kind?"
"Yes, but I may not speak of that."
"Strange--that that dazzling light could rest upon an object before one's
eyes and not be visible."
"With it comes speech, also. Several saints come, attended by myriads of
angels, and they speak to me; I hear their voices, but others do not.
They are very dear to me--my Voices; that is what I call them to myself."
"Joan, what do they tell you?"
"All manner of things--about France, I mean."
"What things have they been used to tell you?"
She sighed, and said:
"Disasters--only disasters, and misfortunes, and humiliation. There was
naught else to foretell."
"They spoke of them to you beforehand?" "Yes. So that I knew what was
going to happen before it happened. It made me grave--as you saw. It
could not be otherwise. But always there was a word of hope, too. More
than that: France was to be rescued, and made great and free again. But
how and by whom--that was not told. Not until to-day." As she said those
last words a sudden deep glow shone in her eyes, which I was to see there
many times in after-days when the bugles sounded the charge and learn to
call it the battle-light. Her breast heaved, and the color rose in her
face. "But to-day I know. God has chosen the meanest of His creatures for
this work; and by His command, and in His protection, and by His
strength, not mine, I am to lead His armies, and win back France, and set
the crown upon the head of His servant that is Dauphin and shall be
King."
I was amazed, and said:
"You, Joan? You, a child, lead armies?"
"Yes. For one little moment or two the thought crushed me; for it is as
you say--I am only a child; a child and ignorant--ignorant of everything
that pertains to war, and not fitted for the rough life of camps and the
companionship of soldiers. But those weak moments passed; they will not
come again. I am enlisted, I will not turn back, God helping me, till the
English grip is loosed from the throat of France. My Voices have never
told me lies, they have not lied to-day. They say I am to go to Robert de
Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs, and he will give me men-at-arms for
escort and send me to the King. A year from now a blow will be struck
which will be the beginning of the end, and the end will follow swiftly."
"Where will it be struck?"
"My Voices have not said; nor what will happen this present year, before
it is struck. It is appointed me to strike it, that is all I know; and
follow it with others, sharp and swift, undoing in ten weeks England's
long years of costly labor, and setting the crown upon the Dauphin's
head--for such is God's will; my Voices have said it, and shall I doubt
it? No; it will be as they have said, for they say only that which is
true."
These were tremendous sayings. They were impossibilities to my reason,
but to my heart they rang true; and so, while my reason doubted, my heart
believed--believed, and held fast to the belief from that day. Presently
I said:
"Joan, I believe the things which you have said, and now I am glad that I
am to march with you to the great wars--that is, if it is with you I am
to march when I go."
She looked surprised, and said:
"It is true that you will be with me when I go to the wars, but how did
you know?"
"I shall march with you, and so also will Jean and Pierre, but not
Jacques."
"All true--it is so ordered, as was revealed to me lately, but I did not
know until to-day that the marching would be with me, or that I should
march at all. How did you know these things?"
I told her when it was that she had said them. But she did not remember
about it. So then I knew that she had been asleep, or in a trance or an
ecstasy of some kind, at that time. She bade me keep these and the other
revelations to myself for the present, and I said I would, and kept the
faith I promised.
None who met Joan that day failed to notice the change that had come over
her. She moved and spoke with energy and decision; there was a strange
new fire in her eye, and also a something wholly new and remarkable in
her carriage and in the set of her head. This new light in the eye and
this new bearing were born of the authority and leadership which had this
day been vested in her by the decree of God, and they asserted that
authority as plainly as speech could have done it, yet without
ostentation or bravado. This calm consciousness of command, and calm
unconscious outward expression of it, remained with her thenceforth until
her mission was accomplished.
Like the other villagers, she had always accorded me the deference due my
rank; but now, without word said on either side, she and I changed
places; she gave orders, not suggestions. I received them with the
deference due a superior, and obeyed them without comment. In the evening
she said to me:
"I leave before dawn. No one will know it but you. I go to speak with the
governor of Vaucouleurs as commanded, who will despise me and treat me
rudely, and perhaps refuse my prayer at this time. I go first to Burey,
to persuade my uncle Laxart to go with me, it not being meet that I go
alone. I may need you in Vaucouleurs; for if the governor will not
receive me I will dictate a letter to him, and so must have some one by
me who knows the art of how to write and spell the words. You will go
from here to-morrow in the afternoon, and remain in Vaucouleurs until I
need you."
I said I would obey, and she went her way. You see how clear a head she
had, and what a just and level judgment. She did not order me to go with
her; no, she would not subject her good name to gossiping remark. She
knew that the governor, being a noble, would grant me, another noble,
audience; but no, you see, she would not have that, either. A poor
peasant-girl presenting a petition through a young nobleman--how would
that look? She always protected her modesty from hurt; and so, for
reward, she carried her good name unsmirched to the end. I knew what I
must do now, if I would have her approval: go to Vaucouleurs, keep out of
her sight, and be ready when wanted.
I went the next afternoon, and took an obscure lodging; the next day I
called at the castle and paid my respects to the governor, who invited me
to dine with him at noon of the following day. He was an ideal soldier of
the time; tall, brawny, gray-headed, rough, full of strange oaths
acquired here and there and yonder in the wars and treasured as if they
were decorations. He had been used to the camp all his life, and to his
notion war was God's best gift to man. He had his steel cuirass on, and
wore boots that came above his knees, and was equipped with a huge sword;
and when I looked at this martial figure, and heard the marvelous oaths,
and guessed how little of poetry and sentiment might be looked for in
this quarter, I hoped the little peasant-girl would not get the privilege
of confronting this battery, but would have to content herself with the
dictated letter.
I came again to the castle the next day at noon, and was conducted to the
great dining-hall and seated by the side of the governor at a small table
which was raised a couple of steps higher than the general table. At the
small table sat several other guests besides myself, and at the general
table sat the chief officers of the garrison. At the entrance door stood
a guard of halberdiers, in morion and breastplate.
As for talk, there was but one topic, of course--the desperate situation
of France. There was a rumor, some one said, that Salisbury was making
preparations to march against Orleans. It raised a turmoil of excited
conversation, and opinions fell thick and fast. Some believed he would
march at once, others that he could not accomplish the investment before
fall, others that the siege would be long, and bravely contested; but
upon one thing all voices agreed: that Orleans must eventually fall, and
with it France. With that, the prolonged discussion ended, and there was
silence. Every man seemed to sink himself in his own thoughts, and to
forget where he was. This sudden and profound stillness, where before had
been so much animation, was impressive and solemn. Now came a servant and
whispered something to the governor, who said:
"Would talk with me?"
"Yes, your Excellency."
"H'm! A strange idea, certainly. Bring them in."
It was Joan and her uncle Laxart. At the spectacle of the great people
the courage oozed out of the poor old peasant and he stopped midway and
would come no further, but remained there with his red nightcap crushed
in his hands and bowing humbly here, there, and everywhere, stupefied
with embarrassment and fear. But Joan came steadily forward, erect and
self-possessed, and stood before the governor. She recognized me, but in
no way indicated it. There was a buzz of admiration, even the governor
contributing to it, for I heard him mutter, "By God's grace, it is a
beautiful creature!" He inspected her critically a moment or two, then
said:
"Well, what is your errand, my child?"
"My message is to you, Robert de Baudricourt, governor of Vaucouleurs,
and it is this: that you will send and tell the Dauphin to wait and not
give battle to his enemies, for God will presently send him help."
This strange speech amazed the company, and many murmured, "The poor
young thing is demented." The governor scowled, and said:
"What nonsense is this? The King--or the Dauphin, as you call him--needs
no message of that sort. He will wait, give yourself no uneasiness as to
that. What further do you desire to say to me?"
"This. To beg that you will give me an escort of men-at-arms and send me
to the Dauphin."
"What for?"
"That he may make me his general, for it is appointed that I shall drive
the English out of France, and set the crown upon his head."
"What--you? Why, you are but a child!"
"Yet am I appointed to do it, nevertheless."
"Indeed! And when will all this happen?"
"Next year he will be crowned, and after that will remain master of
France."
There was a great and general burst of laughter, and when it had subsided
the governor said:
"Who has sent you with these extravagant messages?"
"My Lord."
"What Lord?"
"The King of Heaven."
Many murmured, "Ah, poor thing, poor thing!" and others, "Ah, her mind is
but a wreck!" The governor hailed Laxart, and said:
"Harkye!--take this mad child home and whip her soundly. That is the best
cure for her ailment."
As Joan was moving away she turned and said, with simplicity:
"You refuse me the soldiers, I know not why, for it is my Lord that has
commanded you. Yes, it is He that has made the command; therefore I must
come again, and yet again; then I shall have the men-at-arms."
There was a great deal of wondering talk, after she was gone; and the
guards and servants passed the talk to the town, the town passed it to
the country; Domremy was already buzzing with it when we got back.
Chapter 8 Why the Scorners Relented
HUMAN NATURE is the same everywhere: it defies success, it has nothing
but scorn for defeat. The village considered that Joan had disgraced it
with her grotesque performance and its ridiculous failure; so all the
tongues were busy with the matter, and as bilious and bitter as they were
busy; insomuch that if the tongues had been teeth she would not have
survived her persecutions. Those persons who did not scold did what was
worse and harder to bear; for they ridiculed her, and mocked at her, and
ceased neither day nor night from their witticisms and jeerings and
laughter. Haumette and Little Mengette and I stood by her, but the storm
was too strong for her other friends, and they avoided her, being ashamed
to be seen with her because she was so unpopular, and because of the
sting of the taunts that assailed them on her account. She shed tears in
secret, but none in public. In public she carried herself with serenity,
and showed no distress, nor any resentment--conduct which should have
softened the feeling against her, but it did not. Her father was so
incensed that he could not talk in measured terms about her wild project
of going to the wars like a man. He had dreamed of her doing such a
thing, some time before, and now he remembered that dream with
apprehension and anger, and said that rather than see her unsex herself
and go away with the armies, he would require her brothers to drown her;
and that if they should refuse, he would do it with his own hands.
But none of these things shook her purpose in the least. Her parents kept
a strict watch upon her to keep her from leaving the village, but she
said her time was not yet; that when the time to go was come she should
know it, and then the keepers would watch in vain.
The summer wasted along; and when it was seen that her purpose continued
steadfast, the parents were glad of a chance which finally offered itself
for bringing her projects to an end through marriage. The Paladin had the
effrontery to pretend that she had engaged herself to him several years
before, and now he claimed a ratification of the engagement.
She said his statement was not true, and refused to marry him. She was
cited to appear before the ecclesiastical court at Toul to answer for her
perversity; when she declined to have counsel, and elected to conduct her
case herself, her parents and all her ill-wishers rejoiced, and looked
upon her as already defeated. And that was natural enough; for who would
expect that an ignorant peasant-girl of sixteen would be otherwise than
frightened and tongue-tied when standing for the first time in presence
of the practised doctors of the law, and surrounded by the cold
solemnities of a court? Yet all these people were mistaken. They flocked
to Toul to see and enjoy this fright and embarrassment and defeat, and
they had their trouble for their pains. She was modest, tranquil, and
quite at her ease. She called no witnesses, saying she would content
herself with examining the witnesses for the prosecution. When they had
testified, she rose and reviewed their testimony in a few words,
pronounced it vague, confused, and of no force, then she placed the
Paladin again on the stand and began to search him. His previous
testimony went rag by rag to ruin under her ingenious hands, until at
last he stood bare, so to speak, he that had come so richly clothed in
fraud and falsehood. His counsel began an argument, but the court
declined to hear it, and threw out the case, adding a few words of grave
compliment for Joan, and referring to her as "this marvelous child."
After this victory, with this high praise from so imposing a source
added, the fickle village turned again, and gave Joan countenance,
compliment, and peace. Her mother took her back to her heart, and even
her father relented and said he was proud of her. But the time hung heavy
on her hands, nevertheless, for the siege of Orleans was begun, the
clouds lowered darker and darker over France, and still her Voices said
wait, and gave her no direct commands. The winter set in, and wore
tediously along; but at last there was a change.
BOOK II IN COURT AND CAMP
Chapter 1 Joan Says Good-By
THE 5th of January, 1429, Joan came to me with her uncle Laxart, and
said:
"The time is come. My Voices are not vague now, but clear, and they have
told me what to do. In two months I shall be with the Dauphin."
Her spirits were high, and her bearing martial. I caught the infection
and felt a great impulse stirring in me that was like what one feels when
he hears the roll of the drums and the tramp of marching men.
"I believe it," I said.
"I also believe it," said Laxart. "If she had told me before, that she
was commanded of God to rescue France, I should not have believed; I
should have let her seek the governor by her own ways and held myself
clear of meddling in the matter, not doubting she was mad. But I have
seen her stand before those nobles and might men unafraid, and say her
say; and she had not been able to do that but by the help of God. That I
know. Therefore with all humbleness I am at her command, to do with me as
she will."
"My uncle is very good to me," Joan said. "I sent and asked him to come
and persuade my mother to let him take me home with him to tend his wife,
who is not well. It is arranged, and we go at dawn to-morrow. From his
house I shall go soon to Vaucouleurs, and wait and strive until my prayer
is granted. Who were the two cavaliers who sat to your left at the
governor's table that day?"
"One was the Sieur Jean de Novelonpont de Metz, the other the Sieur
Bertrand de Poulengy."
"Good metal--good metal, both. I marked them for men of mine. . . . What
is it I see in your face? Doubt?"
I was teaching myself to speak the truth to her, not trimming it or
polishing it; so I said:
"They considered you out of your head, and said so. It is true they
pitied you for being in such misfortune, but still they held you to be
mad."
This did not seem to trouble her in any way or wound her. She only said:
"The wise change their minds when they perceive that they have been in
error. These will. They will march with me. I shall see them presently. .
. . You seem to doubt again? Do you doubt?"
"N-no. Not now. I was remembering that it was a year ago, and that they
did not belong here, but only chanced to stop a day on their journey."
"They will come again. But as to matters now in hand; I came to leave
with you some instructions. You will follow me in a few days. Order your
affairs, for you will be absent long."
"Will Jean and Pierre go with me?"
"No; they would refuse now, but presently they will come, and with them
they will bring my parents' blessing, and likewise their consent that I
take up my mission. I shall be stronger, then--stronger for that; for
lack of it I am weak now." She paused a little while, and the tears
gathered in her eyes; then she went on: "I would say good-by to Little
Mengette. Bring her outside the village at dawn; she must go with me a
little of the way--"
"And Haumette?"
She broke down and began to cry, saying:
"No, oh, no--she is too dear to me, I could not bear it, knowing I should
never look upon her face again."
Next morning I brought Mengette, and we four walked along the road in the
cold dawn till the village was far behind; then the two girls said their
good-bys, clinging about each other's neck, and pouring out their grief
in loving words and tears, a pitiful sight to see. And Joan took one long
look back upon the distant village, and the Fairy Tree, and the oak
forest, and the flowery plain, and the river, as if she was trying to
print these scenes on her memory so that they would abide there always
and not fade, for she knew she would not see them any more in this life;
then she turned, and went from us, sobbing bitterly. It was her birthday
and mine. She was seventeen years old.
Chapter 2 The Governor Speeds Joan
After a few days, Laxart took Joan to Vaucouleurs, and found lodging and
guardianship for her with Catherine Royer, a wheelwright's wife, an
honest and good woman. Joan went to mass regularly, she helped do the
housework, earning her keep in that way, and if any wished to talk with
her about her mission--and many did--she talked freely, making no
concealments regarding the matter now. I was soon housed near by, and
witnessed the effects which followed. At once the tidings spread that a
young girl was come who was appointed of God to save France. The common
people flocked in crowds to look at her and speak with her, and her fair
young loveliness won the half of their belief, and her deep earnestness
and transparent sincerity won the other half. The well-to-do remained
away and scoffed, but that is their way.
Next, a prophecy of Merlin's, more than eight hundred years old, was
called to mind, which said that in a far future time France would be lost
by a woman and restored by a woman. France was now, for the first time,
lost--and by a woman, Isabel of Bavaria, her base Queen; doubtless this
fair and pure young girl was commissioned of Heaven to complete the
prophecy.
This gave the growing interest a new and powerful impulse; the excitement
rose higher and higher, and hope and faith along with it; and so from
Vaucouleurs wave after wave of this inspiring enthusiasm flowed out over
the land, far and wide, invading all the villages and refreshing and
revivifying the perishing children of France; and from these villages
came people who wanted to see for themselves, hear for themselves; and
they did see and hear, and believe. They filled the town; they more than
filled it; inns and lodgings were packed, and yet half of the inflow had
to go without shelter. And still they came, winter as it was, for when a
man's soul is starving, what does he care for meat and roof so he can but
get that nobler hunger fed? Day after day, and still day after day the
great tide rose. Domremy was dazed, amazed, stupefied, and said to
itself, "Was this world-wonder in our familiar midst all these years and
we too dull to see it?" Jean and Pierre went out from the village, stared
at and envied like the great and fortunate of the earth, and their
progress to Vaucouleurs was like a triumph, all the country-side flocking
to see and salute the brothers of one with whom angels had spoken face to
face, and into whose hands by command of God they had delivered the
destinies of France.
The brothers brought the parents' blessing and godspeed to Joan, and
their promise to bring it to her in person later; and so, with this
culminating happiness in her heart and the high hope it inspired, she
went and confronted the governor again. But he was no more tractable than
he had been before. He refused to send her to the King. She was
disappointed, but in no degree discouraged. She said:
"I must still come to you until I get the men-at-arms; for so it is
commanded, and I may not disobey. I must go to the Dauphin, though I go
on my knees."
I and the two brothers were with Joan daily, to see the people that came
and hear what they said; and one day, sure enough, the Sieur Jean de Metz
came. He talked with her in a petting and playful way, as one talks with
children, and said:
"What are you doing here, my little maid? Will they drive the King out of
France, and shall we all turn English?"
She answered him in her tranquil, serious way:
"I am come to bid Robert de Baudricourt take or send me to the King, but
he does not heed my words."
"Ah, you have an admirable persistence, truly; a whole year has not
turned you from your wish. I saw you when you came before."
Joan said, as tranquilly as before:
"It is not a wish, it is a purpose. He will grant it. I can wait."
"Ah, perhaps it will not be wise to make too sure of that, my child.
These governors are stubborn people to deal with. In case he shall not
grant your prayer--"
"He will grant it. He must. It is not a matter of choice."
The gentleman's playful mood began to disappear--one could see that, by
his face. Joan's earnestness was affecting him. It always happened that
people who began in jest with her ended by being in earnest. They soon
began to perceive depths in her that they had not suspected; and then her
manifest sincerity and the rocklike steadfastness of her convictions were
forces which cowed levity, and it could not maintain its self-respect in
their presence. The Sieur de Metz was thoughtful for a moment or two,
then he began, quite soberly:
"Is it necessary that you go to the King soon?--that is, I mean--"
"Before Mid-Lent, even though I wear away my legs to the knees!"
She said it with that sort of repressed fieriness that means so much when
a person's heart is in a thing. You could see the response in that
nobleman's face; you could see his eye light up; there was sympathy
there. He said, most earnestly:
"God knows I think you should have the men-at-arms, and that somewhat
would come of it. What is it that you would do? What is your hope and
purpose?"
"To rescue France. And it is appointed that I shall do it. For no one
else in the world, neither kings, nor dukes, no any other, can recover
the kingdom of France, and there is no help but in me."
The words had a pleading and pathetic sound, and they touched that good
nobleman. I saw it plainly. Joan dropped her voice a little, and said:
"But indeed I would rather spin with my poor mother, for this is not my
calling; but I must go and do it, for it is my Lord's will."
"Who is your Lord?"
"He is God."
Then the Sieur de Metz, following the impressive old feudal fashion,
knelt and laid his hands within Joan's in sign of fealty, and made oath
that by God's help he himself would take her to the king.
The next day came the Sieur Bertrand de Poulengy, and he also pledged his
oath and knightly honor to abide with her and follower witherosever she
might lead.
This day, too, toward evening, a great rumor went flying abroad through
the town--namely, that the very governor himself was going to visit the
young girl in her humble lodgings. So in the morning the streets and
lanes were packed with people waiting to see if this strange thing would
indeed happen. And happen it did. The governor rode in state, attended by
his guards, and the news of it went everywhere, and made a great
sensation, and modified the scoffings of the people of quality and raised
Joan's credit higher than ever.
The governor had made up his mind to one thing: Joan was either a witch
or a saint, and he meant to find out which it was. So he brought a priest
with him to exorcise the devil that was in her in case there was one
there. The priest performed his office, but found no devil. He merely
hurt Joan's feelings and offended her piety without need, for he had
already confessed her before this, and should have known, if he knew
anything, that devils cannot abide the confessional, but utter cries of
anguish and the most profane and furious cursings whenever they are
confronted with that holy office.
The governor went away troubled and full of thought, and not knowing what
to do. And while he pondered and studied, several days went by and the
14th of February was come. Then Joan went to the castle and said:
"In God's name, Robert de Baudricourt, you are too slow about sending me,
and have caused damage thereby, for this day the Dauphin's cause has lost
a battle near Orleans, and will suffer yet greater injury if you do not
send me to him soon."
The governor was perplexed by this speech, and said:
"To-day, child, to-day? How can you know what has happened in that region
to-day? It would take eight or ten days for the word to come."
"My Voices have brought the word to me, and it is true. A battle was lost
to-day, and you are in fault to delay me so."
The governor walked the floor awhile, talking within himself, but letting
a great oath fall outside now and then; and finally he said:
"Harkye! go in peace, and wait. If it shall turn out as you say, I will
give you the letter and send you to the King, and not otherwise."
Joan said with fervor:
"Now God be thanked, these waiting days are almost done. In nine days you
will fetch me the letter."
Already the people of Vaucouleurs had given her a horse and had armed and
equipped her as a soldier. She got no chance to try the horse and see if
she could ride it, for her great first duty was to abide at her post and
lift up the hopes and spirits of all who would come to talk with her, and
prepare them to help in the rescue and regeneration of the kingdom. This
occupied every waking moment she had. But it was no matter. There was
nothing she could not learn--and in the briefest time, too. Her horse
would find this out in the first hour. Meantime the brothers and I took
the horse in turn and began to learn to ride. And we had teaching in the
use of the sword and other arms also.
On the 20th Joan called her small army together--the two knights and her
two brothers and me--for a private council of war. No, it was not a
council, that is not the right name, for she did not consult with us, she
merely gave us orders. She mapped out the course she would travel toward
the King, and did it like a person perfectly versed in geography; and
this itinerary of daily marches was so arranged as to avoid here and
there peculiarly dangerous regions by flank movements--which showed that
she knew her political geography as intimately as she knew her physical
geography; yet she had never had a day's schooling, of course, and was
without education. I was astonished, but thought her Voices must have
taught her. But upon reflection I saw that this was not so. By her
references to what this and that and the other person had told her, I
perceived that she had been diligently questioning those crowds of
visiting strangers, and that out of them she had patiently dug all this
mass of invaluable knowledge. The two knights were filled with wonder at
her good sense and sagacity.
She commanded us to make preparations to travel by night and sleep by day
in concealment, as almost the whole of our long journey would be through
the enemy's country.
Also, she commanded that we should keep the date of our departure a
secret, since she meant to get away unobserved. Otherwise we should be
sent off with a grand demonstration which would advertise us to the
enemy, and we should be ambushed and captured somewhere. Finally she
said:
"Nothing remains, now, but that I confide to you the date of our
departure, so that you may make all needful preparation in time, leaving
nothing to be done in haste and badly at the last moment. We march the
23d, at eleven of the clock at night."
Then we were dismissed. The two knights were startled--yes, and troubled;
and the Sieur Bertrand said:
"Even if the governor shall really furnish the letter and the escort, he
still may not do it in time to meet the date she has chosen. Then how can
she venture to name that date? It is a great risk--a great risk to select
and decide upon the date, in this state of uncertainty."
I said:
"Since she has named the 23d, we may trust her. The Voices have told her,
I think. We shall do best to obey."
We did obey. Joan's parents were notified to come before the 23d, but
prudence forbade that they be told why this limit was named.
All day, the 23d, she glanced up wistfully whenever new bodies of
strangers entered the house, but her parents did not appear. Still she
was not discouraged, but hoped on. But when night fell at last, her hopes
perished, and the tears came; however, she dashed them away, and said:
"It was to be so, no doubt; no doubt it was so ordered; I must bear it,
and will."
De Metz tried to comfort her by saying:
"The governor sends no word; it may be that they will come to-morrow,
and--"
He got no further, for she interrupted him, saying:
"To what good end? We start at eleven to-night."
And it was so. At ten the governor came, with his guard and arms, with
horses and equipment for me and for the brothers, and gave Joan a letter
to the King. Then he took off his sword, and belted it about her waist
with his own hands, and said:
"You said true, child. The battle was lost, on the day you said. So I
have kept my word. Now go--come of it what may."
Joan gave him thanks, and he went his way.
The lost battle was the famous disaster that is called in history the
Battle of the Herrings.
All the lights in the house were at once put out, and a little while
after, when the streets had become dark and still, we crept stealthily
through them and out at the western gate and rode away under whip and
spur.
Chapter 3 The Paladin Groans and Boasts
WE WERE twenty-five strong, and well equipped. We rode in double file,
Joan and her brothers in the center of the column, with Jean de Metz at
the head of it and the Sieur Bertrand at its extreme rear. In two or
three hours we should be in the enemy's country, and then none would
venture to desert. By and by we began to hear groans and sobs and
execrations from different points along the line, and upon inquiry found
that six of our men were peasants who had never ridden a horse before,
and were finding it very difficult to stay in their saddles, and moreover
were now beginning to suffer considerable bodily torture. They had been
seized by the governor at the last moment and pressed into the service to
make up the tale, and he had placed a veteran alongside of each with
orders to help him stick to the saddle, and kill him if he tried to
desert.
These poor devils had kept quiet as long as they could, but their
physical miseries were become so sharp by this time that they were
obliged to give them vent. But we were within the enemy's country now, so
there was no help for them, they must continue the march, though Joan
said that if they chose to take the risk they might depart. They
preferred to stay with us. We modified our pace now, and moved
cautiously, and the new men were warned to keep their sorrows to
themselves and not get the command into danger with their curses and
lamentations.
Toward dawn we rode deep into a forest, and soon all but the sentries
were sound asleep in spite of the cold ground and the frosty air.
I woke at noon out of such a solid and stupefying sleep that at first my
wits were all astray, and I did not know where I was nor what had been
happening. Then my senses cleared, and I remembered. As I lay there
thinking over the strange events of the past month or two the thought
came into my mind, greatly surprising me, that one of Joan's prophecies
had failed; for where were Noel and the Paladin, who were to join us at
the eleventh hour? By this time, you see, I had gotten used to expecting
everything Joan said to come true. So, being disturbed and troubled by
these thoughts, I opened my eyes. Well, there stood the Paladin leaning
against a tree and looking down on me! How often that happens; you think
of a person, or speak of a person, and there he stands before you, and
you not dreaming he is near. It looks as if his being near is really the
thing that makes you think of him, and not just an accident, as people
imagine. Well, be that as it may, there was the Paladin, anyway, looking
down in my face and waiting for me to wake. I was ever so glad to see
him, and jumped up and shook him by the hand, and led him a little way
from the camp--he limping like a cripple--and told him to sit down, and
said:
"Now, where have you dropped down from? And how did you happen to light
in this place? And what do the soldier-clothes mean? Tell me all about
it."
He answered:
"I marched with you last night."
"No!" (To myself I said, "The prophecy has not all failed--half of it has
come true.") "Yes, I did. I hurried up from Domremy to join, and was
within a half a minute of being too late. In fact, I was too late, but I
begged so hard that the governor was touched by my brave devotion to my
country's cause--those are the words he used--and so he yielded, and
allowed me to come."
I thought to myself, this is a lie, he is one of those six the governor
recruited by force at the last moment; I know it, for Joan's prophecy
said he would join at the eleventh hour, but not by his own desire. Then
I said aloud:
"I am glad you came; it is a noble cause, and one should not sit at home
in times like these."
"Sit at home! I could no more do it than the thunderstone could stay hid
in the clouds when the storm calls it."
"That is the right talk. It sounds like you."
That pleased him.
"I'm glad you know me. Some don't. But they will, presently. They will
know me well enough before I get done with this war."
"That is what I think. I believe that wherever danger confronts you you
will make yourself conspicuous."
He was charmed with this speech, and it swelled him up like a bladder. He
said:
"If I know myself--and I think I do--my performances in this campaign
will give you occasion more than once to remember those words."
"I were a fool to doubt it. That I know."
"I shall not be at my best, being but a common soldier; still, the
country will hear of me. If I were where I belong; if I were in the place
of La Hire, or Saintrailles, or the Bastard of Orleans--well, I say
nothing. I am not of the talking kind, like Noel Rainguesson and his
sort, I thank God. But it will be something, I take it--a novelty in this
world, I should say--to raise the fame of a private soldier above theirs,
and extinguish the glory of their names with its shadow."
"Why, look here, my friend," I said, "do you know that you have hit out a
most remarkable idea there? Do you realize the gigantic proportions of
it? For look you; to be a general of vast renown, what is that?
Nothing--history is clogged and confused with them; one cannot keep their
names in his memory, there are so many. But a common soldier of supreme
renown--why, he would stand alone! He would the be one moon in a
firmament of mustard-seed stars; his name would outlast the human race!
My friend, who gave you that idea?"
He was ready to burst with happiness, but he suppressed betrayal of it as
well as he could. He simply waved the compliment aside with his hand and
said, with complacency:
"It is nothing. I have them often--ideas like that--and even greater
ones. I do not consider this one much."
"You astonish me; you do, indeed. So it is really your own?"
"Quite. And there is plenty more where it came from"--tapping his head
with his finger, and taking occasion at the same time to cant his morion
over his right ear, which gave him a very self-satisfied air--"I do not
need to borrow my ideas, like Noel Rainguesson."
"Speaking of Noel, when did you see him last?"
"Half an hour ago. He is sleeping yonder like a corpse. Rode with us last
night."
I felt a great upleap in my heart, and said to myself, now I am at rest
and glad; I will never doubt her prophecies again. Then I said aloud:
"It gives me joy. It makes me proud of our village. There is not keeping
our lion-hearts at home in these great times, I see that."
"Lion-heart! Who--that baby? Why, he begged like a dog to be let off.
Cried, and said he wanted to go to his mother. Him a lion-heart!--that
tumble-bug!"
"Dear me, why I supposed he volunteered, of course. Didn't he?"
"Oh, yes, he volunteered the way people do to the headsman. Why, when he
found I was coming up from Domremy to volunteer, he asked me to let him
come along in my protection, and see the crowds and the excitement. Well,
we arrived and saw the torches filing out at the Castle, and ran there,
and the governor had him seized, along with four more, and he begged to
be let off, and I begged for his place, and at last the governor allowed
me to join, but wouldn't let Noel off, because he was disgusted with him,
he was such a cry-baby. Yes, and much good he'll do the King's service;
he'll eat for six and run for sixteen. I hate a pygmy with half a heart
and nine stomachs!"
"Why, this is very surprising news to me, and I am sorry and disappointed
to hear it. I thought he was a very manly fellow."
The Paladin gave me an outraged look, and said:
"I don't see how you can talk like that, I'm sure I don't. I don't see
how you could have got such a notion. I don't dislike him, and I'm not
saying these things out of prejudice, for I don't allow myself to have
prejudices against people. I like him, and have always comraded with him
from the cradle, but he must allow me to speak my mind about his faults,
and I am willing he shall speak his about mine, if I have any. And, true
enough, maybe I have; but I reckon they'll bear inspection--I have that
idea, anyway. A manly fellow! You should have heard him whine and wail
and swear, last night, because the saddle hurt him. Why didn't the saddle
hurt me? Pooh--I was as much at home in it as if I had been born there.
And yet it was the first time I was ever on a horse. All those old
soldiers admired my riding; they said they had never seen anything like
it. But him--why, they had to hold him on, all the time."
An odor as of breakfast came stealing through the wood; the Paladin
unconsciously inflated his nostrils in lustful response, and got up and
limped painfully away, saying he must go and look to his horse.
At bottom he was all right and a good-hearted giant, without any harm in
him, for it is no harm to bark, if one stops there and does not bite, and
it is no harm to be an ass, if one is content to bray and not kick. If
this vast structure of brawn and muscle and vanity and foolishness seemed
to have a libelous tongue, what of it? There was no malice behind it; and
besides, the defect was not of his own creation; it was the work of Noel
Rainguesson, who had nurtured it, fostered it, built it up and perfected
it, for the entertainment he got out of it. His careless light heart had
to have somebody to nag and chaff and make fun of, the Paladin had only
needed development in order to meet its requirements, consequently the
development was taken in hand and diligently attended to and looked
after, gnat-and-bull fashion, for years, to the neglect and damage of far
more important concerns. The result was an unqualified success. Noel
prized the society of the Paladin above everybody else's; the Paladin
preferred anybody's to Noel's. The big fellow was often seen with the
little fellow, but it was for the same reason that the bull is often seen
with the gnat.
With the first opportunity, I had a talk with Noel. I welcomed him to our
expedition, and said:
"It was fine and brave of you to volunteer, Noel."
His eye twinkled, and he answered:
"Yes, it was rather fine, I think. Still, the credit doesn't all belong
to me; I had help."
"Who helped you?"
"The governor."
"How?"
"Well, I'll tell you the whole thing. I came up from Domremy to see the
crowds and the general show, for I hadn't ever had any experience of such
things, of course, and this was a great opportunity; but I hadn't any
mind to volunteer. I overtook the Paladin on the road and let him have my
company the rest of the way, although he did not want it and said so; and
while we were gawking and blinking in the glare of the governor's torches
they seized us and four more and added us to the escort, and that is
really how I came to volunteer. But, after all, I wasn't sorry,
remembering how dull life would have been in the village without the
Paladin."
"How did he feel about it? Was he satisfied?"
"I think he was glad."
"Why?"
"Because he said he wasn't. He was taken by surprise, you see, and it is
not likely that he could tell the truth without preparation. Not that he
would have prepared, if he had had the chance, for I do not think he
would. I am not charging him with that. In the same space of time that he
could prepare to speak the truth, he could also prepare to lie; besides,
his judgment would be cool then, and would warn him against fooling with
new methods in an emergency. No, I am sure he was glad, because he said
he wasn't."
"Do you think he was very glad?"
"Yes, I know he was. He begged like a slave, and bawled for his mother.
He said his health was delicate, and he didn't know how to ride a horse,
and he knew he couldn't outlive the first march. But really he wasn't
looking as delicate as he was feeling. There was a cask of wine there, a
proper lift for four men. The governor's temper got afire, and he
delivered an oath at him that knocked up the dust where it struck the
ground, and told him to shoulder that cask or he would carve him to
cutlets and send him home in a basket. The Paladin did it, and that
secured his promotion to a privacy in the escort without any further
debate."
"Yes, you seem to make it quite plain that he was glad to join--that is,
if your premises are right that you start from. How did he stand the
march last night?"
"About as I did. If he made the more noise, it was the privilege of his
bulk. We stayed in our saddles because we had help. We are equally lame
to-day, and if he likes to sit down, let him; I prefer to stand."
Chapter 4 Joan Leads Us Through the Enemy
WE WERE called to quarters and subjected to a searching inspection by
Joan. Then she made a short little talk in which she said that even the
rude business of war could be conducted better without profanity and
other brutalities of speech than with them, and that she should strictly
require us to remember and apply this admonition. She ordered half an
hour's horsemanship drill for the novices then, and appointed one of the
veterans to conduct it. It was a ridiculous exhibition, but we learned
something, and Joan was satisfied and complimented us. She did not take
any instruction herself or go through the evolutions and manoeuvres, but
merely sat her horse like a martial little statue and looked on. That was
sufficient for her, you see. She would not miss or forget a detail of the
lesson, she would take it all in with her eye and her mind, and apply it
afterward with as much certainty and confidence as if she had already
practised it.
We now made three night marches of twelve or thirteen leagues each,
riding in peace and undisturbed, being taken for a roving band of Free
Companions. Country-folk were glad to have that sort of people go by
without stopping. Still, they were very wearying marches, and not
comfortable, for the bridges were few and the streams many, and as we had
to ford them we found the water dismally cold, and afterward had to bed
ourselves, still wet, on the frosty or snowy ground, and get warm as we
might and sleep if we could, for it would not have been prudent to build
fires. Our energies languished under these hardships and deadly fatigues,
but Joan's did not. Her step kept its spring and firmness and her eye its
fire. We could only wonder at this, we could not explain it.
But if we had had hard times before, I know not what to call the five
nights that now followed, for the marches were as fatiguing, the baths as
cold, and we were ambuscaded seven times in addition, and lost two
novices and three veterans in the resulting fights. The news had leaked
out and gone abroad that the inspired Virgin of Vaucouleurs was making
for the King with an escort, and all the roads were being watched now.
These five nights disheartened the command a good deal. This was
aggravated by a discovery which Noel made, and which he promptly made
known at headquarters. Some of the men had been trying to understand why
Joan continued to be alert, vigorous, and confident while the strongest
men in the company were fagged with the heavy marches and exposure and
were become morose and irritable. There, it shows you how men can have
eyes and yet not see. All their lives those men had seen their own
women-folks hitched up with a cow and dragging the plow in the fields
while the men did the driving. They had also seen other evidences that
women have far more endurance and patience and fortitude than men--but
what good had their seeing these things been to them? None. It had taught
them nothing. They were still surprised to see a girl of seventeen bear
the fatigues of war better than trained veterans of the army. Moreover,
they did not reflect that a great soul, with a great purpose, can make a
weak body strong and keep it so; and here was the greatest soul in the
universe; but how could they know that, those dumb creatures? No, they
knew nothing, and their reasonings were of a piece with their ignorance.
They argued and discussed among themselves, with Noel listening, and
arrived at the decision that Joan was a witch, and had her strange pluck
and strength from Satan; so they made a plan to watch for a safe
opportunity to take her life.
To have secret plottings of this sort going on in our midst was a very
serious business, of course, and the knights asked Joan's permission to
hang the plotters, but she refused without hesitancy. She said:
"Neither these men nor any others can take my life before my mission is
accomplished, therefore why should I have their blood upon my hands? I
will inform them of this, and also admonish them. Call them before me."
When the came she made that statement to them in a plain matter-of-fact
way, and just as if the thought never entered her mind that any one could
doubt it after she had given her word that it was true. The men were
evidently amazed and impressed to hear her say such a thing in such a
sure and confident way, for prophecies boldly uttered never fall barren
on superstitious ears. Yes, this speech certainly impressed them, but her
closing remark impressed them still more. It was for the ringleader, and
Joan said it sorrowfully:
"It is a pity that you should plot another's death when you own is so
close at hand."
That man's horse stumbled and fell on him in the first ford which we
crossed that night, and he was drowned before we could help him. We had
no more conspiracies.
This night was harassed with ambuscades, but we got through without
having any men killed. One more night would carry us over the hostile
frontier if we had good luck, and we saw the night close down with a good
deal of solicitude. Always before, we had been more or less reluctant to
start out into the gloom and the silence to be frozen in the fords and
persecuted by the enemy, but this time we were impatient to get under way
and have it over, although there was promise of more and harder fighting
than any of the previous nights had furnished. Moreover, in front of us
about three leagues there was a deep stream with a frail wooden bridge
over it, and as a cold rain mixed with snow had been falling steadily all
day we were anxious to find out whether we were in a trap or not. If the
swollen stream had washed away the bridge, we might properly consider
ourselves trapped and cut off from escape.
As soon as it was dark we filed out from the depth of the forest where we
had been hidden and began the march. From the time that we had begun to
encounter ambushes Joan had ridden at the head of the column, and she
took this post now. By the time we had gone a league the rain and snow
had turned to sleet, and under the impulse of the storm-wind it lashed my
face like whips, and I envied Joan and the knights, who could close their
visors and shut up their heads in their helmets as in a box. Now, out of
the pitchy darkness and close at hand, came the sharp command:
"Halt!"
We obeyed. I made out a dim mass in front of us which might be a body of
horsemen, but one could not be sure. A man rode up and said to Joan in a
tone of reproof:
"Well, you have taken your time, truly. And what have you found out? Is
she still behind us, or in front?"
Joan answered in a level voice:
"She is still behind."
This news softened the stranger's tone. He said:
"If you know that to be true, you have not lost your time, Captain. But
are you sure? How do you know?"
"Because I have seen her."
"Seen her! Seen the Virgin herself?"
"Yes, I have been in her camp."
"Is it possible! Captain Raymond, I ask you to pardon me for speaking in
that tone just now. You have performed a daring and admirable service.
Where was she camped?"
"In the forest, not more than a league from here."
"Good! I was afraid we might be still behind her, but now that we know
she is behind us, everything is safe. She is our game. We will hang her.
You shall hang her yourself. No one has so well earned the privilege of
abolishing this pestilent limb of Satan."
"I do not know how to thank you sufficiently. If we catch her, I--"
"If! I will take care of that; give yourself no uneasiness. All I want is
just a look at her, to see what the imp is like that has been able to
make all this noise, then you and the halter may have her. How many men
has she?"
"I counted but eighteen, but she may have had two or three pickets out."
"Is that all? It won't be a mouthful for my force. Is it true that she is
only a girl?"
"Yes; she is not more than seventeen."
"It passes belief! Is she robust, or slender?"
"Slender."
The officer pondered a moment or two, then he said:
"Was she preparing to break camp?"
"Not when I had my last glimpse of her."
"What was she doing?"
"She was talking quietly with an officer."
"Quietly? Not giving orders?"
"No, talking as quietly as we are now."
"That is good. She is feeling a false security. She would have been
restless and fussy else--it is the way of her sex when danger is about.
As she was making no preparation to break camp--"
"She certainly was not when I saw her last."
"--and was chatting quietly and at her ease, it means that this weather
is not to her taste. Night-marching in sleet and wind is not for chits of
seventeen. No; she will stay where she is. She has my thanks. We will
camp, ourselves; here is as good a place as any. Let us get about it."
"If you command it--certainly. But she has two knights with her. They
might force her to march, particularly if the weather should improve."
I was scared, and impatient to be getting out of this peril, and it
distressed and worried me to have Joan apparently set herself to work to
make delay and increase the danger--still, I thought she probably knew
better than I what to do. The officer said:
"Well, in that case we are here to block the way."
"Yes, if they come this way. But if they should send out spies, and find
out enough to make them want to try for the bridge through the woods? Is
it best to allow the bridge to stand?"
It made me shiver to hear her.
The officer considered awhile, then said:
"It might be well enough to send a force to destroy the bridge. I was
intending to occupy it with the whole command, but that is not necessary
now."
Joan said, tranquilly:
"With your permission, I will go and destroy it myself."
Ah, now I saw her idea, and was glad she had had the cleverness to invent
it and the ability to keep her head cool and think of it in that tight
place. The officer replied:
"You have it, Captain, and my thanks. With you to do it, it will be well
done; I could send another in your place, but not a better."
They saluted, and we moved forward. I breathed freer. A dozen times I had
imagined I heard the hoofbeats of the real Captain Raymond's troop
arriving behind us, and had been sitting on pins and needles all the
while that that conversation was dragging along. I breathed freer, but
was still not comfortable, for Joan had given only the simple command,
"Forward!" Consequently we moved in a walk. Moved in a dead walk past a
dim and lengthening column of enemies at our side. The suspense was
exhausting, yet it lasted but a short while, for when the enemy's bugles
sang the "Dismount!" Joan gave the word to trot, and that was a great
relief to me. She was always at herself, you see. Before the command to
dismount had been given, somebody might have wanted the countersign
somewhere along that line if we came flying by at speed, but now wee
seemed to be on our way to our allotted camping position, so we were
allowed to pass unchallenged. The further we went the more formidable was
the strength revealed by the hostile force. Perhaps it was only a hundred
or two, but to me it seemed a thousand. When we passed the last of these
people I was thankful, and the deeper we plowed into the darkness beyond
them the better I felt. I came nearer and nearer to feeling good, for an
hour; then we found the bridge still standing, and I felt entirely good.
We crossed it and destroyed it, and then I felt--but I cannot describe
what I felt. One has to feel it himself in order to know what it is like.
We had expected to hear the rush of a pursuing force behind us, for we
thought that the real Captain Raymond would arrive and suggest that
perhaps the troop that had been mistaken for his belonged to the Virgin
of Vaucouleurs; but he must have been delayed seriously, for when we
resumed our march beyond the river there were no sounds behind us except
those which the storm was furnishing.
I said that Joan had harvested a good many compliments intended for
Captain Raymond, and that he would find nothing of a crop left but a dry
stubble of reprimands when he got back, and a commander just in the humor
to superintend the gathering of it in.
Joan said:
"It will be as you say, no doubt; for the commander took a troop for
granted, in the night and unchallenged, and would have camped without
sending a force to destroy the bridge if he had been left unadvised, and
none are so ready to find fault with others as those who do things worthy
of blame themselves."
The Sieur Bertrand was amused at Joan's naive way of referring to her
advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was
saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he
went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had
not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled Joan, and she
said:
"I thought he was deceiving himself. I forbore to tell him lies, for that
would have been wrong; but if my truths deceived him, perhaps that made
them lies, and I am to blame. I would God I knew if I have done wrong."
She was assured that she had done right, and that in the perils and
necessities of war deceptions that help one's own cause and hurt the
enemy's were always permissible; but she was not quite satisfied with
that, and thought that even when a great cause was in danger one ought to
have the privilege of trying honorable ways first. Jean said:
"Joan, you told us yourself that you were going to Uncle Laxart's to
nurse his wife, but you didn't say you were going further, yet you did go
on to Vaucouleurs. There!"
"I see now," said Joan, sorrowfully. "I told no lie, yet I deceived. I
had tried all other ways first, but I could not get away, and I had to
get away. My mission required it. I did wrong, I think, and am to blame."
She was silent a moment, turning the matter over in her mind, then she
added, with quiet decision, "But the thing itself was right, and I would
do it again."
It seemed an over-nice distinction, but nobody said anything. I few had
known her as well as she knew herself, and as her later history revealed
her to us, we should have perceived that she had a clear meaning there,
and that her position was not identical with ours, as we were supposing,
but occupied a higher plane. She would sacrifice herself--and her best
self; that is, her truthfulness--to save her cause; but only that; she
would not buy her life at that cost; whereas our war-ethics permitted the
purchase of our lives, or any mere military advantage, small or great, by
deception. Her saying seemed a commonplace at the time, the essence of
its meaning escaping us; but one sees now that it contained a principle
which lifted it above that and made it great and fine.
Presently the wind died down, the sleet stopped falling, and the cold was
less severe. The road was become a bog, and the horses labored through it
at a walk--they could do no better. As the heavy time wore on, exhaustion
overcame us, and we slept in our saddles. Not even the dangers that
threatened us could keep us awake.
This tenth night seemed longer than any of the others, and of course it
was the hardest, because we had been accumulating fatigue from the
beginning, and had more of it on hand now than at any previous time. But
we were not molested again. When the dull dawn came at last we saw a
river before us and we knew it was the Loire; we entered the town of
Gien, and knew we were in a friendly land, with the hostiles all behind
us. That was a glad morning for us.
We were a worn and bedraggled and shabby-looking troop; and still, as
always, Joan was the freshest of us all, in both body and spirits. We had
averaged above thirteen leagues a night, by tortuous and wretched roads.
It was a remarkable march, and shows what men can do when they have a
leader with a determined purpose and a resolution that never flags.
Chapter 5 We Pierce the Last Ambuscades
WE RESTED and otherwise refreshed ourselves two or three hours at Gien,
but by that time the news was abroad that the young girl commissioned of
God to deliver France was come; wherefore, such a press of people flocked
to our quarters to get sight of her that it seemed best to seek a quieter
place; so we pushed on and halted at a small village called Fierbois.
We were now within six leagues of the King, who was a the Castle of
Chinon. Joan dictated a letter to him at once, and I wrote it. In it she
said she had come a hundred and fifty leagues to bring him good news, and
begged the privilege of delivering it in person. She added that although
she had never seen him she would know him in any disguise and would point
him out.
The two knights rode away at once with the letter. The troop slept all
the afternoon, and after supper we felt pretty fresh and fine, especially
our little group of young Domremians. We had the comfortable tap-room of
the village inn to ourselves, and for the first time in ten unspeakably
long days were exempt from bodings and terrors and hardships and
fatiguing labors. The Paladin was suddenly become his ancient self again,
and was swaggering up and down, a very monument of self-complacency. Noel
Rainguesson said:
"I think it is wonderful, the way he has brought us through."
"Who?" asked Jean.
"Why, the Paladin."
The Paladin seemed not to hear.
"What had he to do with it?" asked Pierre d'Arc.
"Everything. It was nothing but Joan's confidence in his discretion that
enabled her to keep up her heart. She could depend on us and on herself
for valor, but discretion is the winning thing in war, after all;
discretion is the rarest and loftiest of qualities, and he has got more
of it than any other man in France--more of it, perhaps, than any other
sixty men in France."
"Now you are getting ready to make a fool of yourself, Noel Rainguesson,"
said the Paladin, "and you want to coil some of that long tongue of yours
around your neck and stick the end of it in your ear, then you'll be the
less likely to get into trouble."
"I didn't know he had more discretion than other people," said Pierre,
"for discretion argues brains, and he hasn't any more brains than the
rest of us, in my opinion."
"No, you are wrong there. Discretion hasn't anything to do with brains;
brains are an obstruction to it, for it does not reason, it feels.
Perfect discretion means absence of brains. Discretion is a quality of
the heart--solely a quality of the heart; it acts upon us through
feeling. We know this because if it were an intellectual quality it would
only perceive a danger, for instance, where a danger exists; whereas--"
"Hear him twaddle--the damned idiot!" muttered the Paladin.
"--whereas, it being purely a quality of the heart, and proceeding by
feeling, not reason, its reach is correspondingly wider and sublimer,
enabling it to perceive and avoid dangers that haven't any existence at
all; as, for instance, that night in the fog, when the Paladin took his
horse's ears for hostile lances and got off and climbed a tree--"
"It's a lie! a lie without shadow of foundation, and I call upon you all
to beware you give credence to the malicious inventions of this
ramshackle slander-mill that has been doing its best to destroy my
character for years, and will grind up your own reputations for you next.
I got off to tighten my saddle-girth--I wish I may die in my tracks if it
isn't so--and whoever wants to believe it can, and whoever don't can let
it alone."
"There, that is the way with him, you see; he never can discuss a theme
temperately, but always flies off the handle and becomes disagreeable.
And you notice his defect of memory. He remembers getting off his horse,
but forgets all the rest, even the tree. But that is natural; he would
remember getting off the horse because he was so used to doing it. He
always did it when there was an alarm and the clash of arms at the
front."
"Why did he choose that time for it?" asked Jean.
"I don't know. To tighten up his girth, he thinks, to climb a tree, I
think; I saw him climb nine trees in a single night."
"You saw nothing of the kind! A person that can lie like that deserves no
one's respect. I ask you all to answer me. Do you believe what this
reptile has said?"
All seemed embarrassed, and only Pierre replied. He said, hesitatingly:
"I--well, I hardly know what to say. It is a delicate situation. It seems
offensive to me to refuse to believe a person when he makes so direct a
statement, and yet I am obliged to say, rude as it may appear, that I am
not able to believe the whole of it--no, I am not able to believe that
you climbed nine trees."
"There!" cried the Paladin; "now what do you think of yourself, Noel
Rainguesson? How many do you believe I climbed, Pierre?"
"Only eight."
The laughter that followed inflamed the Paladin's anger to white heat,
and he said:
"I bide my time--I bide my time. I will reckon with you all, I promise
you that!"
"Don't get him started," Noel pleaded; "he is a perfect lion when he gets
started. I saw enough to teach me that, after the third skirmish. After
it was over I saw him come out of the bushes and attack a dead man
single-handed."
"It is another lie; and I give you fair warning that you are going too
far. You will see me attack a live one if you are not careful."
"Meaning me, of course. This wounds me more than any number of injurious
and unkind speeches could do. In gratitude to one's benefactor--"
"Benefactor? What do I owe you, I should like to know?"
"You owe me your life. I stood between the trees and the foe, and kept
hundreds and thousands of the enemy at bay when they were thirsting for
your blood. And I did not do it to display my daring. I did it because I
loved you and could not live without you."
"There--you have said enough! I will not stay here to listen to these
infamies. I can endure your lies, but not your love. Keep that corruption
for somebody with a stronger stomach than mine. And I want to say this,
before I go. That you people's small performances might appear the better
and win you the more glory, I hid my own deeds through all the march. I
went always to the front, where the fighting was thickest, to be remote
from you in order that you might not see and be discouraged by the things
I did to the enemy. It was my purpose to keep this a secret in my own
breast, but you force me to reveal it. If you ask for my witnesses,
yonder they lie, on the road we have come. I found that road mud, I paved
it with corpses. I found that country sterile, I fertilized it with
blood. Time and again I was urged to go to the rear because the command
could not proceed on account of my dead. And yet you, you miscreant,
accuse me of climbing trees! Pah!"
And he strode out, with a lofty air, for the recital of his imaginary
deeds had already set him up again and made him feel good.
Next day we mounted and faced toward Chinon. Orleans was at our back now,
and close by, lying in the strangling grip of the English; soon, please
God, we would face about and go to their relief. From Gien the news had
spread to Orleans that the peasant Maid of Vaucouleurs was on her way,
divinely commissioned to raise the siege. The news made a great
excitement and raised a great hope--the first breath of hope those poor
souls had breathed in five months. They sent commissioners at once to the
King to beg him to consider this matter, and not throw this help lightly
away. These commissioners were already at Chinon by this time.
When we were half-way to Chinon we happened upon yet one more squad of
enemies. They burst suddenly out of the woods, and in considerable force,
too; but we were not the apprentices we were ten or twelve days before;
no, we were seasoned to this kind of adventure now; our hearts did not
jump into our throats and our weapons tremble in our hands. We had
learned to be always in battle array, always alert, and always ready to
deal with any emergency that might turn up. We were no more dismayed by
the sight of those people than our commander was. Before they could form,
Joan had delivered the order, "Forward!" and we were down upon them with
a rush. They stood no chance; they turned tail and scattered, we plowing
through them as if they had been men of straw. That was our last
ambuscade, and it was probably laid for us by that treacherous rascal,
the King's own minister and favorite, De la Tremouille.
We housed ourselves in an inn, and soon the town came flocking to get a
glimpse of the Maid.
Ah, the tedious King and his tedious people! Our two good knights came
presently, their patience well wearied, and reported. They and we
reverently stood--as becomes persons who are in the presence of kings and
the superiors of kings--until Joan, troubled by this mark of homage and
respect, and not content with it nor yet used to it, although we had not
permitted ourselves to do otherwise since the day she prophesied that
wretched traitor's death and he was straightway drowned, thus confirming
many previous signs that she was indeed an ambassador commissioned of
God, commanded us to sit; then the Sieur de Metz said to Joan:
"The King has got the letter, but they will not let us have speech with
him."
"Who is it that forbids?"
"None forbids, but there be three or four that are nearest his
person--schemers and traitors every one--that put obstructions in the
way, and seek all ways, by lies and pretexts, to make delay. Chiefest of
these are Georges de la Tremouille and that plotting fox, the Archbishop
of Rheims. While they keep the King idle and in bondage to his sports and
follies, they are great and their importance grows; whereas if ever he
assert himself and rise and strike for crown and country like a man,
their reign is done. So they but thrive, they care not if the crown go to
destruction and the King with it."
"You have spoken with others besides these?"
"Not of the Court, no--the Court are the meek slaves of those reptiles,
and watch their mouths and their actions, acting as they act, thinking as
they think, saying as they say; wherefore they are cold to us, and turn
aside and go another way when we appear. But we have spoken with the
commissioners from Orleans. They said with heat: 'It is a marvel that any
man in such desperate case as is the King can moon around in this torpid
way, and see his all go to ruin without lifting a finger to stay the
disaster. What a most strange spectacle it is! Here he is, shut up in
this wee corner of the realm like a rat in a trap; his royal shelter this
huge gloomy tomb of a castle, with wormy rags for upholstery and crippled
furniture for use, a very house of desolation; in his treasure forty
francs, and not a farthing more, God be witness! no army, nor any shadow
of one; and by contrast with his hungry poverty you behold this crownless
pauper and his shoals of fools and favorites tricked out in the gaudiest
silks and velvets you shall find in any Court in Christendom. And look
you, he knows that when our city falls--as fall it surely will except
succor come swiftly--France falls; he knows that when that day comes he
will be an outlaw and a fugitive, and that behind him the English flag
will float unchallenged over every acre of his great heritage; he knows
these things, he knows that our faithful city is fighting all solitary
and alone against disease, starvation, and the sword to stay this awful
calamity, yet he will not strike one blow to save her, he will not hear
our prayers, he will not even look upon our faces.' That is what the
commissioners said, and they are in despair."
Joan said, gently:
"It is pity, but they must not despair. The Dauphin will hear them
presently. Tell them so."
She almost always called the King the Dauphin. To her mind he was not
King yet, not being crowned.
"We will tell them so, and it will content them, for they believe you
come from God. The Archbishop and his confederate have for backer that
veteran soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Grand Master of the Palace, a worthy
man, but simply a soldier, with no head for any greater matter. He cannot
make out to see how a country-girl, ignorant of war, can take a sword in
her small hand and win victories where the trained generals of France
have looked for defeats only, for fifty years--and always found them. And
so he lifts his frosty mustache and scoffs."
"When God fights it is but small matter whether the hand that bears His
sword is big or little. He will perceive this in time. Is there none in
that Castle of Chinon who favors us?"
"Yes, the King's mother-in-law, Yolande, Queen of Sicily, who is wise and
good. She spoke with the Sieur Bertrand."
"She favors us, and she hates those others, the King's beguilers," said
Bertrand. "She was full of interest, and asked a thousand questions, all
of which I answered according to my ability. Then she sat thinking over
these replies until I thought she was lost in a dream and would wake no
more. But it was not so. At last she said, slowly, and as if she were
talking to herself: 'A child of seventeen--a girl--country-bred
--untaught--ignorant of war, the use of arms, and the conduct of battles
--modest, gentle, shrinking--yet throws away her shepherd's crook and
clothes herself in steel, and fights her way through a hundred and fifty
leagues of fear, and comes--she to whom a king must be a dread and awful
presence--and will stand up before such an one and say, Be not afraid,
God has sent me to save you! Ah, whence could come a courage and
conviction so sublime as this but from very God Himself!' She was silent
again awhile, thinking and making up her mind; then she said, 'And
whether she comes of God or no, there is that in her heart that raises
her above men--high above all men that breathe in France to-day--for in
her is that mysterious something that puts heart into soldiers, and
turns mobs of cowards into armies of fighters that forget what fear is
when they are in that presence --fighters who go into battle with joy in
their eyes and songs on their lips, and sweep over the field like a
storm --that is the spirit that can save France, and that alone, come it
whence it may! It is in her, I do truly believe, for what else could
have borne up that child on that great march, and made her despise its
dangers and fatigues? The King must see her face to face--and shall!'
She dismissed me with those good words, and I know her promise will be
kept. They will delay her all they can--those animals--but she will not
fail in the end."
"Would she were King!" said the other knight, fervently. "For there is
little hope that the King himself can be stirred out of his lethargy. He
is wholly without hope, and is only thinking of throwing away everything
and flying to some foreign land. The commissioners say there is a spell
upon him that makes him hopeless--yes, and that it is shut up in a
mystery which they cannot fathom."
"I know the mystery," said Joan, with quiet confidence; "I know it, and
he knows it, but no other but God. When I see him I will tell him a
secret that will drive away his trouble, then he will hold up his head
again."
I was miserable with curiosity to know what it was that she would tell
him, but she did not say, and I did not expect she would. She was but a
child, it is true; but she was not a chatterer to tell great matters and
make herself important to little people; no, she was reserved, and kept
things to herself, as the truly great always do.
The next day Queen Yolande got one victory over the King's keepers, for,
in spite of their protestations and obstructions, she procured an
audience for our two knights, and they made the most they could out of
their opportunity. They told the King what a spotless and beautiful
character Joan was, and how great and noble a spirit animated her, and
they implored him to trust in her, believe in her, and have faith that
she was sent to save France. They begged him to consent to see her. He
was strongly moved to do this, and promised that he would not drop the
matter out of his mind, but would consult with his council about it. This
began to look encouraging. Two hours later there was a great stir below,
and the innkeeper came flying up to say a commission of illustrious
ecclesiastics was come from the King--from the King his very self,
understand!--think of this vast honor to his humble little hostelry!--and
he was so overcome with the glory of it that he could hardly find breath
enough in his excited body to put the facts into words. They were come
from the King to speak with the Maid of Vaucouleurs. Then he flew
downstairs, and presently appeared again, backing into the room, and
bowing to the ground with every step, in front of four imposing and
austere bishops and their train of servants.
Joan rose, and we all stood. The bishops took seats, and for a while no
word was said, for it was their prerogative to speak first, and they were
so astonished to see what a child it was that was making such a noise in
the world and degrading personages of their dignity to the base function
of ambassadors to her in her plebeian tavern, that they could not find
any words to say at first. Then presently their spokesman told Joan they
were aware that she had a message for the King, wherefore she was now
commanded to put it into words, briefly and without waste of time or
embroideries of speech.
As for me, I could hardly contain my joy--our message was to reach the
King at last! And there was the same joy and pride and exultation in the
faces of our knights, too, and in those of Joan's brothers. And I knew
that they were all praying--as I was--that the awe which we felt in the
presence of these great dignitaries, and which would have tied our
tongues and locked our jaws, would not affect her in the like degree, but
that she would be enabled to word her message well, and with little
stumbling, and so make a favorable impression here, where it would be so
valuable and so important.
Ah, dear, how little we were expecting what happened then! We were aghast
to hear her say what she said. She was standing in a reverent attitude,
with her head down and her hands clasped in front of her; for she was
always reverent toward the consecrated servants of God. When the
spokesman had finished, she raised her head and set her calm eye on those
faces, not any more disturbed by their state and grandeur than a princess
would have been, and said, with all her ordinary simplicity and modesty
of voice and manner:
"Ye will forgive me, reverend sirs, but I have no message save for the
King's ear alone."
Those surprised men were dumb for a moment, and their faces flushed
darkly; then the spokesman said:
"Hark ye, to you fling the King's command in his face and refuse to
deliver this message of yours to his servants appointed to receive it?"
"God has appointed me to receive it, and another's commandment may not
take precedence of that. I pray you let me have speech for his grace the
Dauphin."
"Forbear this folly, and come at your message! Deliver it, and waste no
more time about it."
"You err indeed, most reverend fathers in God, and it is not well. I am
not come hither to talk, but to deliver Orleans, and lead the Dauphin to
his good city of Rheims, and set the crown upon his head."
"Is that the message you send to the King?"
But Joan only said, in the simple fashion which was her wont:
"Ye will pardon me for reminding you again--but I have no message to send
to any one."
The King's messengers rose in deep anger and swept out of the place
without further words, we and Joan kneeling as they passed.
Our countenances were vacant, our hearts full of a sense of disaster. Our
precious opportunity was thrown away; we could not understand Joan's
conduct, she who had ben so wise until this fatal hour. At last the Sieur
Bertrand found courage to ask her why she had let this great chance to
get her message to the King go by.
"Who sent them here?" she asked.
"The King."
"Who moved the King to send them?" She waited for an answer; none came,
for we began to see what was in her mind--so she answered herself: "The
Dauphin's council moved him to it. Are they enemies to me and to the
Dauphin's weal, or are they friends?"
"Enemies," answered the Sieur Bertrand.
"If one would have a message go sound and ungarbled, does one choose
traitors and tricksters to send it by?"
I saw that we had been fools, and she wise. They saw it too, so none
found anything to say. Then she went on:
"They had but small wit that contrived this trap. They thought to get my
message and seem to deliver it straight, yet deftly twist it from its
purpose. You know that one part of my message is but this--to move the
Dauphin by argument and reasonings to give me men-at-arms and send me to
the siege. If an enemy carried these in the right words, the exact words,
and no word missing, yet left out the persuasions of gesture and
supplicating tone and beseeching looks that inform the words and make
them live, where were the value of that argument--whom could it convince?
Be patient, the Dauphin will hear me presently; have no fear."
The Sieur de Metz nodded his head several times, and muttered as to
himself:
"She was right and wise, and we are but dull fools, when all is said."
It was just my thought; I could have said it myself; and indeed it was
the thought of all there present. A sort of awe crept over us, to think
how that untaught girl, taken suddenly and unprepared, was yet able to
penetrate the cunning devices of a King's trained advisers and defeat
them. Marveling over this, and astonished at it, we fell silent and spoke
no more. We had come to know that she was great in courage, fortitude,
endurance, patience, conviction, fidelity to all duties--in all things,
indeed, that make a good and trusty soldier and perfect him for his post;
now we were beginning to feel that maybe there were greatnesses in her
brain that were even greater than these great qualities of the heart. It
set us thinking.
What Joan did that day bore fruit the very day after. The King was
obliged to respect the spirit of a young girl who could hold her own and
stand her ground like that, and he asserted himself sufficiently to put
his respect into an act instead of into polite and empty words. He moved
Joan out of that poor inn, and housed her, with us her servants, in the
Castle of Courdray, personally confiding her to the care of Madame de
Bellier, wife of old Raoul de Gaucourt, Master of the Palace. Of course,
this royal attention had an immediate result: all the great lords and
ladies of the Court began to flock there to see and listen to the
wonderful girl-soldier that all the world was talking about, and who had
answered the King's mandate with a bland refusal to obey. Joan charmed
them every one with her sweetness and simplicity and unconscious
eloquence, and all the best and capablest among them recognized that
there was an indefinable something about her that testified that she was
not made of common clay, that she was built on a grander plan than the
mass of mankind, and moved on a loftier plane. These spread her fame. She
always made friends and advocates that way; neither the high nor the low
could come within the sound of her voice and the sight of her face and go
out from her presence indifferent.
Chapter 6 Joan Convinces the King
WELL, anything to make delay. The King's council advised him against
arriving at a decision in our matter too precipitately. He arrive at a
decision too precipitately! So they sent a committee of priests--always
priests--into Lorraine to inquire into Joan's character and history--a
matter which would consume several weeks, of course. You see how
fastidious they were. It was as if people should come to put out the fire
when a man's house was burning down, and they waited till they could send
into another country to find out if he had always kept the Sabbath or
not, before letting him try.
So the days poked along; dreary for us young people in some ways, but not
in all, for we had one great anticipation in front of us; we had never
seen a king, and now some day we should have that prodigious spectacle to
see and to treasure in our memories all our lives; so we were on the
lookout, and always eager and watching for the chance. The others were
doomed to wait longer than I, as it turned out. One day great news
came--the Orleans commissioners, with Yolande and our knights, had at
last turned the council's position and persuaded the King to see Joan.
Joan received the immense news gratefully but without losing her head,
but with us others it was otherwise; we could not eat or sleep or do any
rational thing for the excitement and the glory of it. During two days
our pair of noble knights were in distress and trepidation on Joan's
account, for the audience was to be at night, and they were afraid that
Joan would be so paralyzed by the glare of light from the long files of
torches, the solemn pomps and ceremonies, the great concourse of renowned
personages, the brilliant costumes, and the other splendors of the Court,
that she, a simple country-maid, and all unused to such things, would be
overcome by these terrors and make a piteous failure.
No doubt I could have comforted them, but I was not free to speak. Would
Joan be disturbed by this cheap spectacle, this tinsel show, with its
small King and his butterfly dukelets?--she who had spoken face to face
with the princes of heaven, the familiars of God, and seen their retinue
of angels stretching back into the remoteness of the sky, myriads upon
myriads, like a measureless fan of light, a glory like the glory of the
sun streaming from each of those innumerable heads, the massed radiance
filling the deeps of space with a blinding splendor? I thought not.
Queen Yolande wanted Joan to make the best possible impression upon the
King and the Court, so she was strenuous to have her clothed in the
richest stuffs, wrought upon the princeliest pattern, and set off with
jewels; but in that she had to be disappointed, of course, Joan not being
persuadable to it, but begging to be simply and sincerely dressed, as
became a servant of God, and one sent upon a mission of a serious sort
and grave political import. So then the gracious Queen imagined and
contrived that simple and witching costume which I have described to you
so many times, and which I cannot think of even now in my dull age
without being moved just as rhythmical and exquisite music moves one; for
that was music, that dress--that is what it was--music that one saw with
a the eyes and felt in the heart. Yes, she was a poem, she was a dream,
she was a spirit when she was clothed in that.
She kept that raiment always, and wore it several times upon occasions of
state, and it is preserved to this day in the Treasury of Orleans, with
two of her swords, and her banner, and other things now sacred because
they had belonged to her.
At the appointed time the Count of Vendome, a great lord of the court,
came richly clothed, with his train of servants and assistants, to
conduct Joan to the King, and the two knights and I went with her, being
entitled to this privilege by reason of our official positions near her
person.
When we entered the great audience-hall, there it all was just as I have
already painted it. Here were ranks of guards in shining armor and with
polished halberds; two sides of the hall were like flower-gardens for
variety of color and the magnificence of the costumes; light streamed
upon these masses of color from two hundred and fifty flambeaux. There
was a wide free space down the middle of the hall, and at the end of it
was a throne royally canopied, and upon it sat a crowned and sceptered
figure nobly clothed and blazing with jewels.
It is true that Joan had been hindered and put off a good while, but now
that she was admitted to an audience at last, she was received with
honors granted to only the greatest personages. At the entrance door
stood four heralds in a row, in splendid tabards, with long slender
silver trumpets at their mouths, with square silken banners depending
from them embroidered with the arms of France. As Joan and the Count
passed by, these trumpets gave forth in unison one long rich note, and as
we moved down the hall under the pictured and gilded vaulting, this was
repeated at every fifty feet of our progress--six times in all. It made
our good knights proud and happy, and they held themselves erect, and
stiffened their stride, and looked fine and soldierly. They were not
expecting this beautiful and honorable tribute to our little
country-maid.
Joan walked two yards behind the Count, we three walked two yards behind
Joan. Our solemn march ended when we were as yet some eight or ten steps
from the throne. The Count made a deep obeisance, pronounced Joan's name,
then bowed again and moved to his place among a group of officials near
the throne. I was devouring the crowned personage with all my eyes, and
my heart almost stood still with awe.
The eyes of all others were fixed upon Joan in a gaze of wonder which was
half worship, and which seemed to say, "How sweet--how lovely--how
divine!" All lips were parted and motionless, which was a sure sign that
those people, who seldom forget themselves, had forgotten themselves now,
and were not conscious of anything but the one object they were gazing
upon. They had the look of people who are under the enchantment of a
vision.
Then they presently began to come to life again, rousing themselves out
of the spell and shaking it off as one drives away little by little a
clinging drowsiness or intoxication. Now they fixed their attention upon
Joan with a strong new interest of another sort; they were full of
curiosity to see what she would do--they having a secret and particular
reason for this curiosity. So they watched. This is what they saw:
She made no obeisance, nor even any slight inclination of her head, but
stood looking toward the throne in silence. That was all there was to see
at present.
I glanced up at De Metz, and was shocked at the paleness of his face. I
whispered and said:
"What is it, man, what is it?"
His answering whisper was so weak I could hardly catch it:
"They have taken advantage of the hint in her letter to play a trick upon
her! She will err, and they will laugh at her. That is not the King that
sits there."
Then I glanced at Joan. She was still gazing steadfastly toward the
throne, and I had the curious fancy that even her shoulders and the back
of her head expressed bewilderment. Now she turned her head slowly, and
her eye wandered along the lines of standing courtiers till it fell upon
a young man who was very quietly dressed; then her face lighted joyously,
and she ran and threw herself at his feet, and clasped his knees,
exclaiming in that soft melodious voice which was her birthright and was
now charged with deep and tender feeling:
"God of his grace give you long life, O dear and gentle Dauphin!"
In his astonishment and exultation De Metz cried out:
"By the shadow of God, it is an amazing thing!" Then he mashed all the
bones of my hand in his grateful grip, and added, with a proud shake of
his mane, "Now, what have these painted infidels to say!"
Meantime the young person in the plain clothes was saying to Joan:
"Ah, you mistake, my child, I am not the King. There he is," and he
pointed to the throne.
The knight's face clouded, and he muttered in grief and indignation:
"Ah, it is a shame to use her so. But for this lie she had gone through
safe. I will go and proclaim to all the house what--"
"Stay where you are!" whispered I and the Sieur Bertrand in a breath, and
made him stop in his place.
Joan did not stir from her knees, but still lifted her happy face toward
the King, and said:
"No, gracious liege, you are he, and none other."
De Metz's troubles vanished away, and he said:
"Verily, she was not guessing, she knew. Now, how could she know? It is a
miracle. I am content, and will meddle no more, for I perceive that she
is equal to her occasions, having that in her head that cannot profitably
be helped by the vacancy that is in mine."
This interruption of his lost me a remark or two of the other talk;
however, I caught the King's next question:
"But tell me who you are, and what would you?"
"I am called Joan the Maid, and am sent to say that the King of Heaven
wills that you be crowned and consecrated in your good city of Rheims,
and be thereafter Lieutenant of the Lord of Heaven, who is King of
France. And He willeth also that you set me at my appointed work and give
me men-at-arms." After a slight pause she added, her eye lighting at the
sound of her words, "For then will I raise the siege of Orleans and break
the English power!"
The young monarch's amused face sobered a little when this martial speech
fell upon that sick air like a breath blown from embattled camps and
fields of war, and this trifling smile presently faded wholly away and
disappeared. He was grave now, and thoughtful. After a little he waved
his hand lightly, and all the people fell away and left those two by
themselves in a vacant space. The knights and I moved to the opposite
side of the hall and stood there. We saw Joan rise at a sign, then she
and the King talked privately together.
All that host had been consumed with curiosity to see what Joan would do.
Well, they had seen, and now they were full of astonishment to see that
she had really performed that strange miracle according to the promise in
her letter; and they were fully as much astonished to find that she was
not overcome by the pomps and splendors about her, but was even more
tranquil and at her ease in holding speech with a monarch than ever they
themselves had been, with all their practice and experience.
As for our two knights, they were inflated beyond measure with pride in
Joan, but nearly dumb, as to speech, they not being able to think out any
way to account for her managing to carry herself through this imposing
ordeal without ever a mistake or an awkwardness of any kind to mar the
grace and credit of her great performance.
The talk between Joan and the King was long and earnest, and held in low
voices. We could not hear, but we had our eyes and could note effects;
and presently we and all the house noted one effect which was memorable
and striking, and has been set down in memoirs and histories and in
testimony at the Process of Rehabilitation by some who witnessed it; for
all knew it was big with meaning, though none knew what that meaning was
at that time, of course. For suddenly we saw the King shake off his
indolent attitude and straighten up like a man, and at the same time look
immeasurably astonished. It was as if Joan had told him something almost
too wonderful for belief, and yet of a most uplifting and welcome nature.
It was long before we found out the secret of this conversation, but we
know it now, and all the world knows it. That part of the talk was like
this--as one may read in all histories. The perplexed King asked Joan for
a sign. He wanted to believe in her and her mission, and that her Voices
were supernatural and endowed with knowledge hidden from mortals, but how
could he do this unless these Voices could prove their claim in some
absolutely unassailable way? It was then that Joan said:
"I will give you a sign, and you shall no more doubt. There is a secret
trouble in your heart which you speak of to none--a doubt which wastes
away your courage, and makes you dream of throwing all away and fleeing
from your realm. Within this little while you have been praying, in your
own breast, that God of his grace would resolve that doubt, even if the
doing of it must show you that no kingly right is lodged in you."
It was that that amazed the King, for it was as she had said: his prayer
was the secret of his own breast, and none but God could know about it.
So he said:
"The sign is sufficient. I know now that these Voices are of God. They
have said true in this matter; if they have said more, tell it me--I will
believe."
"They have resolved that doubt, and I bring their very words, which are
these: Thou art lawful heir to the King thy father, and true heir of
France. God has spoken it. Now lift up they head, and doubt no more, but
give me men-at-arms and let me get about my work."
Telling him he was of lawful birth was what straightened him up and made
a man of him for a moment, removing his doubts upon that head and
convincing him of his royal right; and if any could have hanged his
hindering and pestiferous council and set him free, he would have
answered Joan's prayer and set her in the field. But no, those creatures
were only checked, not checkmated; they could invent some more delays.
We had been made proud by the honors which had so distinguished Joan's
entrance into that place--honors restricted to personages of very high
rank and worth--but that pride was as nothing compared with the pride we
had in the honor done her upon leaving it. For whereas those first honors
were shown only to the great, these last, up to this time, had been shown
only to the royal. The King himself led Joan by the hand down the great
hall to the door, the glittering multitude standing and making reverence
as they passed, and the silver trumpets sounding those rich notes of
theirs. Then he dismissed her with gracious words, bending low over her
hand and kissing it. Always--from all companies, high or low--she went
forth richer in honor and esteem than when she came.
And the King did another handsome thing by Joan, for he sent us back to
Courdray Castle torch-lighted and in state, under escort of his own
troop--his guard of honor--the only soldiers he had; and finely equipped
and bedizened they were, too, though they hadn't seen the color of their
wages since they were children, as a body might say. The wonders which
Joan had been performing before the King had been carried all around by
this time, so the road was so packed with people who wanted to get a
sight of her that we could hardly dig through; and as for talking
together, we couldn't, all attempts at talk being drowned in the storm of
shoutings and huzzas that broke out all along as we passed, and kept
abreast of us like a wave the whole way.
Chapter 7 Our Paladin in His Glory
WE WERE doomed to suffer tedious waits and delays, and we settled
ourselves down to our fate and bore it with a dreary patience, counting
the slow hours and the dull days and hoping for a turn when God should
please to send it. The Paladin was the only exception--that is to say, he
was the only one who was happy and had no heavy times. This was partly
owing to the satisfaction he got out of his clothes. He bought them at
second hand--a Spanish cavalier's complete suit, wide-brimmed hat with
flowing plumes, lace collar and cuffs, faded velvet doublet and trunks,
short cloak hung from the shoulder, funnel-topped buskins, long rapier,
and all that--a graceful and picturesque costume, and the Paladin's great
frame was the right place to hang it for effect. He wore it when off
duty; and when he swaggered by with one hand resting on the hilt of his
rapier, and twirling his new mustache with the other, everybody stopped
to look and admire; and well they might, for he was a fine and stately
contrast to the small French gentlemen of the day squeezed into the
trivial French costume of the time.
He was king bee of the little village that snuggled under the shelter of
the frowning towers and bastions of Courdray Castle, and acknowledged
lord of the tap-room of the inn. When he opened his mouth there, he got a
hearing. Those simple artisans and peasants listened with deep and
wondering interest; for he was a traveler and had seen the world--all of
it that lay between Chinon and Domremy, at any rate--and that was a wide
stretch more of it than they might ever hope to see; and he had been in
battle, and knew how to paint its shock and struggle, its perils and
surprised, with an art that was all his own. He was cock of that walk,
hero of that hostelry; he drew custom as honey draws flies; so he was the
pet of the innkeeper, and of his wife and daughter, and they were his
obliged and willing servants.
Most people who have the narrative gift--that great and rare
endowment--have with it the defect of telling their choice things over
the same way every time, and this injures them and causes them to sound
stale and wearisome after several repetitions; but it was not so with the
Paladin, whose art was of a finer sort; it was more stirring and
interesting to hear him tell about a battle the tenth time than it was
the first time, because he did not tell it twice the same way, but always
made a new battle of it and a better one, with more casualties on the
enemy's side each time, and more general wreck and disaster all around,
and more widows and orphans and suffering in the neighborhood where it
happened. He could not tell his battles apart himself, except by their
names; and by the time he had told one of then ten times it had grown so
that there wasn't room enough in France for it any more, but was lapping
over the edges. But up to that point the audience would not allow him to
substitute a new battle, knowing that the old ones were the best, and
sure to improve as long as France could hold them; and so, instead of
saying to him as they would have said to another, "Give us something
fresh, we are fatigued with that old thing," they would say, with one
voice and with a strong interest, "Tell about the surprise at Beaulieu
again--tell in three or four times!" That is a compliment which few
narrative experts have heard in their lifetime.
At first when the Paladin heard us tell about the glories of the Royal
Audience he was broken-hearted because he was not taken with us to it;
next, his talk was full of what he would have done if he had been there;
and within two days he was telling what he did do when he was there. His
mill was fairly started, now, and could be trusted to take care of its
affair. Within three nights afterward all his battles were taking a rest,
for already his worshipers in the tap-room were so infatuated with the
great tale of the Royal Audience that they would have nothing else, and
so besotted with it were they that they would have cried if they could
not have gotten it.
Noel Rainguesson hid himself and heard it, and came and told me, and
after that we went together to listen, bribing the inn hostess to let us
have her little private parlor, where we could stand at the wickets in
the door and see and hear.
The tap-room was large, yet had a snug and cozy look, with its inviting
little tables and chairs scattered irregularly over its red brick floor,
and its great fire flaming and crackling in the wide chimney. It was a
comfortable place to be in on such chilly and blustering March nights as
these, and a goodly company had taken shelter there, and were sipping
their wine in contentment and gossiping one with another in a neighborly
way while they waited for the historian. The host, the hostess, and their
pretty daughter were flying here and there and yonder among the tables
and doing their best to keep up with the orders. The room was about forty
feet square, and a space or aisle down the center of it had been kept
vacant and reserved for the Paladin's needs. At the end of it was a
platform ten or twelve feet wide, with a big chair and a small table on
it, and three steps leading up to it.
Among the wine-sippers were many familiar faces: the cobbler, the
farrier, the blacksmith, the wheelwright, the armorer, the maltster, the
weaver, the backer, the miller's man with his dusty coat, and so on; and
conscious and important, as a matter of course, was the barber-surgeon,
for he is that in all villages. As he has to pull everybody's teeth and
purge and bleed all the grown people once a month to keep their health
sound, he knows everybody, and by constant contact with all sorts of folk
becomes a master of etiquette and manners and a conversationalist of
large facility. There were plenty of carriers, drovers, and their sort,
and journeymen artisans.
When the Paladin presently came sauntering indolently in, he was received
with a cheer, and the barber hustled forward and greeted him with several
low and most graceful and courtly bows, also taking his hand an touching
his lips to it. Then he called in a loud voice for a stoup of wine for
the Paladin, and when the host's daughter brought it up on the platform
and dropped her courtesy and departed, the barber called after her, and
told her to add the wine to his score. This won him ejaculations of
approval, which pleased him very much and made his little rat-eyes shine;
and such applause is right and proper, for when we do a liberal and
gallant thing it is but natural that we should wish to see notice taken
of it.
The barber called upon the people to rise and drink the Paladin's health,
and they did it with alacrity and affectionate heartiness, clashing their
metal flagons together with a simultaneous crash, and heightening the
effect with a resounding cheer. It was a fine thing to see how that young
swashbuckler had made himself so popular in a strange land in so little a
while, and without other helps to his advancement than just his tongue
and the talent to use it given him by God--a talent which was but one
talent in the beginning, but was now become ten through husbandry and the
increment and usufruct that do naturally follow that and reward it as by
a law.
The people sat down and began to hammer on the tables with their flagons
and call for "the King's Audience!--the King's Audience! --the King's
Audience!" The Paladin stood there in one of his best attitudes, with his
plumed great hat tipped over to the left, the folds of his short cloak
drooping from his shoulder, and the one hand resting upon the hilt of his
rapier and the other lifting his beaker. As the noise died down he made a
stately sort of a bow, which he had picked up somewhere, then fetched his
beaker with a sweep to his lips and tilted his head back and rained it to
the bottom. The barber jumped for it and set it upon the Paladin's table.
Then the Paladin began to walk up and down his platform with a great deal
of dignity and quite at his ease; and as he walked he talked, and every
little while stopped and stood facing his house and so standing continued
his talk.
We went three nights in succession. It was plain that there was a charm
about the performance that was apart from the mere interest which
attaches to lying. It was presently discoverable that this charm lay in
the Paladin's sincerity. He was not lying consciously; he believed what
he was saying. To him, his initial statements were facts, and whenever he
enlarged a statement, the enlargement became a fact too. He put his heart
into his extravagant narrative, just as a poet puts his heart into a
heroic fiction, and his earnestness disarmed criticism--disarmed it as
far as he himself was concerned. Nobody believed his narrative, but all
believed that he believed it.
He made his enlargements without flourish, without emphasis, and so
casually that often one failed to notice that a change had been made. He
spoke of the governor of Vaucouleurs, the first night, simply as the
governor of Vaucouleurs; he spoke of him the second night as his uncle
the governor of Vaucouleurs; the third night he was his father. He did
not seem to know that he was making these extraordinary changes; they
dropped from his lips in a quite natural and effortless way. By his first
night's account the governor merely attached him to the Maid's military
escort in a general and unofficial way; the second night his uncle the
governor sent him with the Maid as lieutenant of her rear guard; the
third night his father the governor put the whole command, Maid and all,
in his special charge. The first night the governor spoke of his as a
youth without name or ancestry, but "destined to achieve both"; the
second night his uncle the governor spoke of him as the latest and
worthiest lineal descendent of the chiefest and noblest of the Twelve
Paladins of Charlemagne; the third night he spoke of his as the lineal
descendent of the whole dozen. In three nights he promoted the Count of
Vendome from a fresh acquaintance to a schoolmate, and then
brother-in-law.
At the King's Audience everything grew, in the same way. First the four
silver trumpets were twelve, then thirty-five, finally ninety-six; and by
that time he had thrown in so many drums and cymbals that he had to
lengthen the hall from five hundred feet to nine hundred to accommodate
them. Under his hand the people present multiplied in the same large way.
The first two nights he contented himself with merely describing and
exaggerating the chief dramatic incident of the Audience, but the third
night he added illustration to description. He throned the barber in his
own high chair to represent the sham King; then he told how the Court
watched the Maid with intense interest and suppressed merriment,
expecting to see her fooled by the deception and get herself swept
permanently out of credit by the storm of scornful laughter which would
follow. He worked this scene up till he got his house in a burning fever
of excitement and anticipation, then came his climax. Turning to the
barber, he said:
"But mark you what she did. She gazed steadfastly upon that sham's
villain face as I now gaze upon yours--this being her noble and simple
attitude, just as I stand now--then turned she--thus--to me, and
stretching her arm out--so--and pointing with her finger, she said, in
that firm, calm tone which she was used to use in directing the conduct
of a battle, 'Pluck me this false knave from the throne!' I, striding
forward as I do now, took him by the collar and lifted him out and held
him aloft--thus--as it he had been but a child." (The house rose,
shouting, stamping, and banging with their flagons, and went fairly mad
over this magnificent exhibition of strength--and there was not the
shadow of a laugh anywhere, though the spectacle of the limp but proud
barber hanging there in the air like a puppy held by the scruff of its
neck was a thing that had nothing of solemnity about it.) "Then I set him
down upon his feet--thus--being minded to get him by a better hold and
heave him out of the window, but she bid me forbear, so by that error he
escaped with his life.
"Then she turned her about and viewed the throng with those eyes of hers,
which are the clear-shining windows whence her immortal wisdom looketh
out upon the world, resolving its falsities and coming at the kernel of
truth that is hid within them, and presently they fell upon a young man
modestly clothed, and him she proclaimed for what he truly was, saying,
'I am thy servant--thou art the King!' Then all were astonished, and a
great shout went up, the whole six thousand joining in it, so that the
walls rocked with the volume and the tumult of it."
He made a fine and picturesque thing of the march-out from the Audience,
augmenting the glories of it to the last limit of the impossibilities;
then he took from his finger and held up a brass nut from a bolt-head
which the head ostler at the castle had given him that morning, and made
his conclusion--thus:
"Then the King dismissed the Maid most graciously--as indeed was her
desert--and, turning to me, said, 'Take this signet-ring, son of the
Paladins, and command me with it in your day of need; and look you,' said
he, touching my temple, 'preserve this brain, France has use for it; and
look well to its casket also, for I foresee that it will be hooped with a
ducal coronet one day.' I took the ring, and knelt and kissed his hand,
saying, 'Sire, where glory calls, there will I be found; where danger and
death are thickest, that is my native air; when France and the throne
need help--well, I say nothing, for I am not of the talking sort--let my
deeds speak for me, it is all I ask.'
"So ended the most fortunate and memorable episode, so big with future
weal for the crown and the nation, and unto God be the thanks! Rise! Fill
you flagons! Now--to France and the King--drink!"
They emptied them to the bottom, then burst into cheers and huzzas, and
kept it up as much as two minutes, the Paladin standing at stately ease
the while and smiling benignantly from his platform.
Chapter 8 Joan Persuades Her Inquisitors
WHEN JOAN told the King what that deep secret was that was torturing his
heart, his doubts were cleared away; he believed she was sent of God, and
if he had been let alone he would have set her upon her great mission at
once. But he was not let alone. Tremouille and the holy fox of Rheims
knew their man. All they needed to say was this--and they said it:
"Your Highness says her Voices have revealed to you, by her mouth, a
secret known only to yourself and God. How can you know that her Voices
are not of Satan, and she his mouthpiece?--for does not Satan know the
secrets of men and use his knowledge for the destruction of their souls?
It is a dangerous business, and your Highness will do well not to proceed
in it without probing the matter to the bottom."
That was enough. It shriveled up the King's little soul like a raisin,
with terrors and apprehensions, and straightway he privately appointed a
commission of bishops to visit and question Joan daily until they should
find out whether her supernatural helps hailed from heaven or from hell.
The King's relative, the Duke of Alencon, three years prisoner of war to
the English, was in these days released from captivity through promise of
a great ransom; and the name and fame of the Maid having reached him--for
the same filled all mouths now, and penetrated to all parts--he came to
Chinon to see with his own eyes what manner of creature she might be. The
King sent for Joan and introduced her to the Duke. She said, in her
simple fashion:
"You are welcome; the more of the blood of France that is joined to this
cause, the better for the cause and it."
Then the two talked together, and there was just the usual result: when
they departed, the Duke was her friend and advocate.
Joan attended the King's mass the next day, and afterward dined with the
King and the Duke. The King was learning to prize her company and value
her conversation; and that might well be, for, like other kings, he was
used to getting nothing out of people's talk but guarded phrases,
colorless and non-committal, or carefully tinted to tally with the color
of what he said himself; and so this kind of conversation only vexes and
bores, and is wearisome; but Joan's talk was fresh and free, sincere and
honest, and unmarred by timorous self-watching and constraint. She said
the very thing that was in her mind, and said it in a plain,
straightforward way. One can believe that to the King this must have been
like fresh cold water from the mountains to parched lips used to the
water of the sun-baked puddles of the plain.
After dinner Joan so charmed the Duke with her horsemanship and lance
practice in the meadows by the Castle of Chinon whither the King also had
come to look on, that he made her a present of a great black war-steed.
Every day the commission of bishops came and questioned Joan about her
Voices and her mission, and then went to the King with their report.
These pryings accomplished but little. She told as much as she considered
advisable, and kept the rest to herself. Both threats and trickeries were
wasted upon her. She did not care for the threats, and the traps caught
nothing. She was perfectly frank and childlike about these things. She
knew the bishops were sent by the King, that their questions were the
King's questions, and that by all law and custom a King's questions must
be answered; yet she told the King in her naive way at his own table one
day that she answered only such of those questions as suited her.
The bishops finally concluded that they couldn't tell whether Joan was
sent by God or not. They were cautious, you see. There were two powerful
parties at Court; therefore to make a decision either way would
infallibly embroil them with one of those parties; so it seemed to them
wisest to roost on the fence and shift the burden to other shoulders. And
that is what they did. They made final report that Joan's case was beyond
their powers, and recommended that it be put into the hands of the
learned and illustrious doctors of the University of Poitiers. Then they
retired from the field, leaving behind them this little item of
testimony, wrung from them by Joan's wise reticence: they said she was a
"gentle and simple little shepherdess, very candid, but not given to
talking."
It was quite true--in their case. But if they could have looked back and
seen her with us in the happy pastures of Domremy, they would have
perceived that she had a tongue that could go fast enough when no harm
could come of her words.
So we traveled to Poitiers, to endure there three weeks of tedious delay
while this poor child was being daily questioned and badgered before a
great bench of--what? Military experts?--since what she had come to apply
for was an army and the privilege of leading it to battle against the
enemies of France. Oh no; it was a great bench of priests and
monks--profoundly leaned and astute casuists--renowned professors of
theology! Instead of setting a military commission to find out if this
valorous little soldier could win victories, they set a company of holy
hair-splitters and phrase-mongers to work to find out if the soldier was
sound in her piety and had no doctrinal leaks. The rats were devouring
the house, but instead of examining the cat's teeth and claws, they only
concerned themselves to find out if it was a holy cat. If it was a pious
cat, a moral cat, all right, never mind about the other capacities, they
were of no consequence.
Joan was as sweetly self-possessed and tranquil before this grim
tribunal, with its robed celebrities, its solemn state and imposing
ceremonials, as if she were but a spectator and not herself on trial. She
sat there, solitary on her bench, untroubled, and disconcerted the
science of the sages with her sublime ignorance--an ignorance which was a
fortress; arts, wiles, the learning drawn from books, and all like
missiles rebounded from its unconscious masonry and fell to the ground
harmless; they could not dislodge the garrison which was within--Joan's
serene great heart and spirit, the guards and keepers of her mission.
She answered all questions frankly, and she told all the story of her
visions and of her experiences with the angels and what they said to her;
and the manner of the telling was so unaffected, and so earnest and
sincere, and made it all seem so lifelike and real, that even that hard
practical court forgot itself and sat motionless and mute, listening with
a charmed and wondering interest to the end. And if you would have other
testimony than mine, look in the histories and you will find where an
eyewitness, giving sworn testimony in the Rehabilitation process, says
that she told that tale "with a noble dignity and simplicity," and as to
its effect, says in substance what I have said. Seventeen, she
was--seventeen, and all alone on her bench by herself; yet was not
afraid, but faced that great company of erudite doctors of law ant
theology, and by the help of no art learned in the schools, but using
only the enchantments which were hers by nature, of youth, sincerity, a
voice soft and musical, and an eloquence whose source was the heart, not
the head, she laid that spell upon them. Now was not that a beautiful
thing to see? If I could, I would put it before you just as I saw it;
then I know what you would say.
As I have told you, she could not read. "One day they harried and
pestered her with arguments, reasonings, objections, and other windy and
wordy trivialities, gathered out of the works of this and that and the
other great theological authority, until at last her patience vanished,
and she turned upon them sharply and said:
"I don't know A from B; but I know this: that I am come by command of the
Lord of Heaven to deliver Orleans from the English power and crown the
King of Rheims, and the matters ye are puttering over are of no
consequence!"
Necessarily those were trying days for her, and wearing for everybody
that took part; but her share was the hardest, for she had no holidays,
but must be always on hand and stay the long hours through, whereas this,
that, and the other inquisitor could absent himself and rest up from his
fatigues when he got worn out. And yet she showed no wear, no weariness,
and but seldom let fly her temper. As a rule she put her day through
calm, alert, patient, fencing with those veteran masters of scholarly
sword-play and coming out always without a scratch.
One day a Dominican sprung upon her a question which made everybody cock
up his ears with interest; as for me, I trembled, and said to myself she
is done this time, poor Joan, for there is no way of answering this. The
sly Dominican began in this way--in a sort of indolent fashion, as if the
thing he was about was a matter of no moment:
"You assert that God has willed to deliver France from this English
bondage?"
"Yes, He has willed it."
"You wish for men-at-arms, so that you may go to the relief of Orleans, I
believe?"
"Yes--and the sooner the better."
"God is all-powerful, and able to do whatsoever thing He wills to do, is
it not so?"
"Most surely. None doubts it."
The Dominican lifted his head suddenly, and sprung that question I have
spoken of, with exultation:
"Then answer me this. If He has willed to deliver France, and is able to
do whatsoever He wills, where is the need for men-at-arms?"
There was a fine stir and commotion when he said that, and a sudden
thrusting forward of heads and putting up of hands to ears to catch the
answer; and the Dominican wagged his head with satisfaction, and looked
about him collecting his applause, for it shone in every face. But Joan
was not disturbed. There was no note of disquiet in her voice when she
answered:
"He helps who help themselves. The sons of France will fight the battles,
but He will give the victory!"
You could see a light of admiration sweep the house from face to face
like a ray from the sun. Even the Dominican himself looked pleased, to
see his master-stroke so neatly parried, and I heard a venerable bishop
mutter, in the phrasing common to priest and people in that robust time,
"By God, the child has said true. He willed that Goliath should be slain,
and He sent a child like this to do it!"
Another day, when the inquisition had dragged along until everybody
looked drowsy and tired but Joan, Brother Seguin, professor of theology
at the University of Poitiers, who was a sour and sarcastic man, fell to
plying Joan with all sorts of nagging questions in his bastard Limousin
French--for he was from Limoges. Finally he said:
"How is it that you understand those angels? What language did they
speak?"
"French."
"In-deed! How pleasant to know that our language is so honored! Good
French?"
"Yes--perfect."
"Perfect, eh? Well, certainly you ought to know. It was even better than
your own, eh?"
"As to that, I--I believe I cannot say," said she, and was going on, but
stopped. Then she added, almost as if she were saying it to herself,
"Still, it was an improvement on yours!"
I knew there was a chuckle back of her eyes, for all their innocence.
Everybody shouted. Brother Seguin was nettled, and asked brusquely:
"Do you believe in God?"
Joan answered with an irritating nonchalance:
"Oh, well, yes--better than you, it is likely."
Brother Seguin lost his patience, and heaped sarcasm after sarcasm upon
her, and finally burst out in angry earnest, exclaiming:
"Very well, I can tell you this, you whose believe in God is so great:
God has not willed that any shall believe in you without a sign. Where is
your sign?--show it!"
This roused Joan, and she was on her feet in a moment, and flung out her
retort with spirit:
"I have not come to Poitiers to show signs and do miracles. Send me to
Orleans and you shall have signs enough. Give me men-at-arms--few or
many--and let me go!"
The fire was leaping from her eyes--ah, the heroic little figure! can't
you see her? There was a great burst of acclamations, and she sat down
blushing, for it was not in her delicate nature to like being
conspicuous.
This speech and that episode about the French language scored two points
against Brother Seguin, while he scored nothing against Joan; yet, sour
man as he was, he was a manly man, and honest, as you can see by the
histories; for at the Rehabilitation he could have hidden those unlucky
incidents if he had chosen, but he didn't do it, but spoke them right out
in his evidence.
On one of the latter days of that three-weeks session the gowned scholars
and professors made one grand assault all along the line, fairly
overwhelming Joan with objections and arguments culled from the writings
of every ancient and illustrious authority of the Roman Church. She was
well-nigh smothered; but at last she shook herself free and struck back,
crying out:
"Listen! The Book of God is worth more than all these ye cite, and I
stand upon it. And I tell ye there are things in that Book that not one
among ye can read, with all your learning!"
From the first she was the guest, by invitation, of the dame De Rabateau,
wife of a councilor of the Parliament of Poitiers; and to that house the
great ladies of the city came nightly to see Joan and talk with her; and
not these only, but the old lawyers, councilors and scholars of the
Parliament and the University. And these grave men, accustomed to weigh
every strange and questionable thing, and cautiously consider it, and
turn it about this way and that and still doubt it, came night after
night, and night after night, falling ever deeper and deeper under the
influence of that mysterious something, that spell, that elusive and
unwordable fascination, which was the supremest endowment of Joan of Arc,
that winning and persuasive and convincing something which high and low
alike recognized and felt, but which neither high nor low could explain
or describe, and one by one they all surrendered, saying, "This child is
sent of God."
All day long Joan, in the great court and subject to its rigid rules of
procedure, was at a disadvantage; her judges had things their own way;
but at night she held court herself, and matters were reversed, she
presiding, with her tongue free and her same judges there before her.
There could not be but one result: all the objections and hindrances they
could build around her with their hard labors of the day she would charm
away at night. In the end, she carried her judges with her in a mass, and
got her great verdict without a dissenting voice.
The court was a sight to see when the president of it read it from his
throne, for all the great people of the town were there who could get
admission and find room. First there were some solemn ceremonies, proper
and usual at such times; then, when there was silence again, the reading
followed, penetrating the deep hush so that every word was heard in even
the remotest parts of the house:
"It is found, and is hereby declared, that Joan of Arc, called the Maid,
is a good Christian and a good Catholic; that there is nothing in her
person or her words contrary to the faith; and that the King may and
ought to accept the succor she offers; for to repel it would be to offend
the Holy Spirit, and render him unworthy of the air of God."
The court rose, and then the storm of plaudits burst forth unrebuked,
dying down and bursting forth again and again, and I lost sight of Joan,
for she was swallowed up in a great tide of people who rushed to
congratulate her and pour out benedictions upon her and upon the cause of
France, now solemnly and irrevocably delivered into her little hands.
Chapter 9 She Is Made General-in-Chief
IT WAS indeed a great day, and a stirring thing to see.
She had won! It was a mistake of Tremouille and her other ill-wishers to
let her hold court those nights.
The commission of priests sent to Lorraine ostensibly to inquire into
Joan's character--in fact to weary her with delays and wear out her
purpose and make her give it up--arrived back and reported her character
perfect. Our affairs were in full career now, you see.
The verdict made a prodigious stir. Dead France woke suddenly to life,
wherever the great news traveled. Whereas before, the spiritless and
cowed people hung their heads and slunk away if one mentioned war to
them, now they came clamoring to be enlisted under the banner of the Maid
of Vaucouleurs, and the roaring of war-songs and the thundering of the
drums filled all the air. I remembered now what she had said, that time
there in our village when I proved by facts and statistics that France's
case was hopeless, and nothing could ever rouse the people from their
lethargy:
"They will hear the drums--and they will answer, they will march!"
It has been said that misfortunes never come one at a time, but in a
body. In our case it was the same with good luck. Having got a start, it
came flooding in, tide after tide. Our next wave of it was of this sort.
There had been grave doubts among the priests as to whether the Church
ought to permit a female soldier to dress like a man. But now came a
verdict on that head. Two of the greatest scholars and theologians of the
time--one of whom had been Chancellor of the University of
Paris--rendered it. They decided that since Joan "must do the work of a
man and a soldier, it is just and legitimate that her apparel should
conform to the situation."
It was a great point gained, the Church's authority to dress as a man.
Oh, yes, wave on wave the good luck came sweeping in. Never mind about
the smaller waves, let us come to the largest one of all, the wave that
swept us small fry quite off our feet and almost drowned us with joy. The
day of the great verdict, couriers had been despatched to the King with
it, and the next morning bright and early the clear notes of a bugle came
floating to us on the crisp air, and we pricked up our ears and began to
count them. One--two--three; pause; one--two; pause; one--two--three,
again--and out we skipped and went flying; for that formula was used only
when the King's herald-at-arms would deliver a proclamation to the
people. As we hurried along, people came racing out of every street and
house and alley, men, women, and children, all flushed, excited, and
throwing lacking articles of clothing on as they ran; still those clear
notes pealed out, and still the rush of people increased till the whole
town was abroad and streaming along the principal street. At last we
reached the square, which was now packed with citizens, and there, high
on the pedestal of the great cross, we saw the herald in his brilliant
costume, with his servitors about him. The next moment he began his
delivery in the powerful voice proper to his office:
"Know all men, and take heed therefore, that the most high, the most
illustrious Charles, by the grace of God King of France, hath been
pleased to confer upon his well-beloved servant Joan of Arc, called the
Maid, the title, emoluments, authorities, and dignity of General-in-Chief
of the Armies of France--"
Here a thousand caps flew in the air, and the multitude burst into a
hurricane of cheers that raged and raged till it seemed as if it would
never come to an end; but at last it did; then the herald went on and
finished:
--"and hath appointed to be her lieutenant and chief of staff a prince of
his royal house, his grace the Duke of Alencon!"
That was the end, and the hurricane began again, and was split up into
innumerable strips by the blowers of it and wafted through all the lanes
and streets of the town.
General of the Armies of France, with a prince of the blood for
subordinate! Yesterday she was nothing--to-day she was this. Yesterday
she was not even a sergeant, not even a corporal, not even a
private--to-day, with one step, she was at the top. Yesterday she was
less than nobody to the newest recruit--to-day her command was law to La
Hire, Saintrailles, the Bastard of Orleans, and all those others,
veterans of old renown, illustrious masters of the trade of war. These
were the thoughts I was thinking; I was trying to realize this strange
and wonderful thing that had happened, you see.
My mind went travelling back, and presently lighted upon a picture--a
picture which was still so new and fresh in my memory that it seemed a
matter of only yesterday--and indeed its date was no further back than
the first days of January. This is what it was. A peasant-girl in a
far-off village, her seventeenth year not yet quite completed, and
herself and her village as unknown as if they had been on the other side
of the globe. She had picked up a friendless wanderer somewhere and
brought it home--a small gray kitten in a forlorn and starving
condition--and had fed it and comforted it and got its confidence and
made it believe in her, and now it was curled up in her lap asleep, and
she was knitting a coarse stocking and thinking--dreaming--about what,
one may never know. And now--the kitten had hardly had time to become a
cat, and yet already the girl is General of the Armies of France, with a
prince of the blood to give orders to, and out of her village obscurity
her name has climbed up like the sun and is visible from all corners of
the land! It made me dizzy to think of these things, they were so out of
the common order, and seemed so impossible.
Chapter 10 The Maid's Sword and Banner
JOAN'S first official act was to dictate a letter to the English
commanders at Orleans, summoning them to deliver up all strongholds in
their possession and depart out of France. She must have been thinking it
all out before and arranging it in her mind, it flowed from her lips so
smoothly, and framed itself into such vivacious and forcible language.
Still, it might not have been so; she always had a quick mind and a
capable tongue, and her faculties were constantly developing in these
latter weeks. This letter was to be forwarded presently from Blois. Men,
provisions, and money were offering in plenty now, and Joan appointed
Blois as a recruiting-station and depot of supplies, and ordered up La
Hire from the front to take charge.
The Great Bastard--him of the ducal house, and governor of Orleans--had
been clamoring for weeks for Joan to be sent to him, and now came another
messenger, old D'Aulon, a veteran officer, a trusty man and fine and
honest. The King kept him, and gave him to Joan to be chief of her
household, and commanded her to appoint the rest of her people herself,
making their number and dignity accord with the greatness of her office;
and at the same time he gave order that they should be properly equipped
with arms, clothing, and horses.
Meantime the King was having a complete suit of armor made for her at
Tours. It was of the finest steel, heavily plated with silver, richly
ornamented with engraved designs, and polished like a mirror.
Joan's Voices had told her that there was an ancient sword hidden
somewhere behind the altar of St. Catherine's at Fierbois, and she sent
De Metz to get it. The priests knew of no such sword, but a search was
made, and sure enough it was found in that place, buried a little way
under the ground. It had no sheath and was very rusty, but the priests
polished it up and sent it to Tours, whither we were now to come. They
also had a sheath of crimson velvet made for it, and the people of Tours
equipped it with another, made of cloth-of-gold. But Joan meant to carry
this sword always in battle; so she laid the showy sheaths away and got
one made of leather. It was generally believed that his sword had
belonged to Charlemagne, but that was only a matter of opinion. I wanted
to sharpen that old blade, but she said it was not necessary, as she
should never kill anybody, and should carry it only as a symbol of
authority.
At Tours she designed her Standard, and a Scotch painter named James
Power made it. It was of the most delicate white boucassin, with fringes
of silk. For device it bore the image of God the Father throned in the
clouds and holding the world in His hand; two angels knelt at His feet,
presenting lilies; inscription, JESUS, MARIA; on the reverse the crown of
France supported by two angels.
She also caused a smaller standard or pennon to be made, whereon was
represented an angel offering a lily to the Holy Virgin.
Everything was humming there at Tours. Every now and then one heard the
bray and crash of military music, every little while one heard the
measured tramp of marching men--squads of recruits leaving for Blois;
songs and shoutings and huzzas filled the air night and day, the town was
full of strangers, the streets and inns were thronged, the bustle of
preparation was everywhere, and everybody carried a glad and cheerful
face. Around Joan's headquarters a crowd of people was always massed,
hoping for a glimpse of the new General, and when they got it, they went
wild; but they seldom got it, for she was busy planning her campaign,
receiving reports, giving orders, despatching couriers, and giving what
odd moments she could spare to the companies of great folk waiting in the
drawing-rooms. As for us boys, we hardly saw her at all, she was so
occupied.
We were in a mixed state of mind--sometimes hopeful, sometimes not;
mostly not. She had not appointed her household yet--that was our
trouble. We knew she was being overrun with applications for places in
it, and that these applications were backed by great names and weighty
influence, whereas we had nothing of the sort to recommend us. She could
fill her humblest places with titled folk--folk whose relationships would
be a bulwark for her and a valuable support at all times. In these
circumstances would policy allow her to consider us? We were not as
cheerful as the rest of the town, but were inclined to be depressed and
worried. Sometimes we discussed our slim chances and gave them as good an
appearance as we could. But the very mention of the subject was anguish
to the Paladin; for whereas we had some little hope, he had none at all.
As a rule Noel Rainguesson was quite with Hireing to let the dismal
matter alone; but not when the Paladin was present. Once we were talking
the thing over, when Noel said:
"Cheer up, Paladin, I had a dream last night, and you were the only one
among us that got an appointment. It wasn't a high one, but it was an
appointment, anyway--some kind of a lackey or body-servant, or something
of that kind."
The Paladin roused up and looked almost cheerful; for he was a believer
in dreams, and in anything and everything of a superstitious sort, in
fact. He said, with a rising hopefulness:
"I wish it might come true. Do you think it will come true?"
"Certainly; I might almost say I know it will, for my dreams hardly ever
fail."
"Noel, I could hug you if that dream could come true, I could, indeed! To
be servant of the first General of France and have all the world hear of
it, and the news go back to the village and make those gawks stare that
always said I wouldn't ever amount to anything--wouldn't it be great! Do
you think it will come true, Noel? Don't you believe it will?"
"I do. There's my hand on it."
"Noel, if it comes true I'll never forget you--shake again! I should be
dressed in a noble livery, and the news would go to the village, and
those animals would say, 'Him, lackey to the General-in-Chief, with the
eyes of the whole world on him, admiring--well, he has shot up into the
sky now, hasn't he!"
He began to walk the floor and pile castles in the air so fast and so
high that we could hardly keep up with him. Then all of a sudden all the
joy went out of his face and misery took its place, and he said:
"Oh, dear, it is all a mistake, it will never come true. I forgot that
foolish business at Toul. I have kept out of her sight as much as I
could, all these weeks, hoping she would forget that and forgive it --but
I know she never will. She can't, of course. And, after all, I wasn't to
blame. I did say she promised to marry me, but they put me up to it and
persuaded me. I swear they did!" The vast creature was almost crying.
Then he pulled himself together and said, remorsefully, "It was the only
lie I've ever told, and--"
He was drowned out with a chorus of groans and outraged exclamations; and
before he could begin again, one of D'Aulon's liveried servants appeared
and said we were required at headquarters. We rose, and Noel said:
"There--what did I tell you? I have a presentiment--the spirit of
prophecy is upon me. She is going to appoint him, and we are to go there
and do him homage. Come along!"
But the Paladin was afraid to go, so we left him.
When we presently stood in the presence, in front of a crowd of
glittering officers of the army, Joan greeted us with a winning smile,
and said she appointed all of us to places in her household, for she
wanted her old friends by her. It was a beautiful surprise to have
ourselves honored like this when she could have had people of birth and
consequence instead, but we couldn't find our tongues to say so, she was
become so great and so high above us now. One at a time we stepped
forward and each received his warrant from the hand of our chief,
D'Aulon. All of us had honorable places; the two knights stood highest;
then Joan's two brothers; I was first page and secretary, a young
gentleman named Raimond was second page; Noel was her messenger; she had
two heralds, and also a chaplain and almoner, whose name was Jean
Pasquerel. She had previously appointed a maitre d'hotel and a number of
domestics. Now she looked around and said:
"But where is the Paladin?"
The Sieur Bertrand said:
"He thought he was not sent for, your Excellency."
"Now that is not well. Let him be called."
The Paladin entered humbly enough. He ventured no farther than just
within the door. He stopped there, looking embarrassed and afraid. Then
Joan spoke pleasantly, and said:
"I watched you on the road. You began badly, but improved. Of old you
were a fantastic talker, but there is a man in you, and I will bring it
out." It was fine to see the Paladin's face light up when she said that.
"Will you follow where I lead?"
"Into the fire!" he said; and I said to myself, "By the ring of that, I
think she has turned this braggart into a hero. It is another of her
miracles, I make no doubt of it."
"I believe you," said Joan. "Here--take my banner. You will ride with me
in every field, and when France is saved, you will give it me back."
He took the banner, which is now the most precious of the memorials that
remain of Joan of Arc, and his voice was unsteady with emotion when he
said:
"If I ever disgrace this trust, my comrades here will know how to do a
friend's office upon my body, and this charge I lay upon them, as knowing
they will not fail me."
Chapter 11 The War March Is Begun
NO L and I went back together--silent at first, and impressed.
Finally Noel came up out of his thinkings and said:
"The first shall be last and the last first--there's authority for this
surprise. But at the same time wasn't it a lofty hoist for our big bull!"
"It truly was; I am not over being stunned yet. It was the greatest place
in her gift."
"Yes, it was. There are many generals, and she can create more; but there
is only one Standard-Bearer."
"True. It is the most conspicuous place in the army, after her own."
"And the most coveted and honorable. Sons of two dukes tried to get it,
as we know. And of all people in the world, this majestic windmill
carries it off. Well, isn't it a gigantic promotion, when you come to
look at it!"
"There's no doubt about it. It's a kind of copy of Joan's own in
miniature."
"I don't know how to account for it--do you?"
"Yes--without any trouble at all--that is, I think I do."
Noel was surprised at that, and glanced up quickly, as if to see if I was
in earnest. He said:
"I thought you couldn't be in earnest, but I see you are. If you can make
me understand this puzzle, do it. Tell me what the explanation is."
"I believe I can. You have noticed that our chief knight says a good many
wise things and has a thoughtful head on his shoulders. One day, riding
along, we were talking about Joan's great talents, and he said, 'But,
greatest of all her gifts, she has the seeing eye.' I said, like an
unthinking fool, 'The seeing eye?--I shouldn't count on that for much--I
suppose we all have it.' 'No,' he said; 'very few have it.' Then he
explained, and made his meaning clear. He said the common eye sees only
the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces
through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which
the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind of eye
couldn't detect. He said the mightiest military genius must fail and come
to nothing if it have not the seeing eye--that is to say, if it cannot
read men and select its subordinates with an infallible judgment. It sees
as by intuition that this man is good for strategy, that one for dash and
daredevil assault, the other for patient bulldog persistence, and it
appoints each to his right place and wins, while the commander without
the seeing eye would give to each the other's place and lose. He was
right about Joan, and I saw it. When she was a child and the tramp came
one night, her father and all of us took him for a rascal, but she saw
the honest man through the rags. When I dined with the governor of
Vaucouleurs so long ago, I saw nothing in our two knights, though I sat
with them and talked with them two hours; Joan was there five minutes,
and neither spoke with them nor heard them speak, yet she marked them for
men of worth and fidelity, and they have confirmed her judgment. Whom has
she sent for to take charge of this thundering rabble of new recruits at
Blois, made up of old disbanded Armagnac raiders, unspeakable hellions,
every one? Why, she has sent for Satan himself--that is to say, La
Hire--that military hurricane, that godless swashbuckler, that lurid
conflagration of blasphemy, that Vesuvius of profanity, forever in
eruption. Does he know how to deal with that mob of roaring devils?
Better than any man that lives; for he is the head devil of this world
his own self, he is the match of the whole of them combined, and probably
the father of most of them. She places him in temporary command until she
can get to Blois herself--and then! Why, then she will certainly take
them in hand personally, or I don't know her as well as I ought to, after
all these years of intimacy. That will be a sight to see--that fair
spirit in her white armor, delivering her will to that muck-heap, that
rag-pile, that abandoned refuse of perdition."
"La Hire!" cried Noel, "our hero of all these years--I do want to see
that man!"
"I too. His name stirs me just as it did when I was a little boy."
"I want to hear him swear."
"Of course, I would rather hear him swear than another man pray. He is
the frankest man there is, and the naivest. Once when he was rebuked for
pillaging on his raids, he said it was nothing. Said he, 'If God the
Father were a soldier, He would rob.' I judge he is the right man to take
temporary charge there at Blois. Joan has cast the seeing eye upon him,
you see."
"Which brings us back to where we started. I have an honest affection for
the Paladin, and not merely because he is a good fellow, but because he
is my child--I made him what he is, the windiest blusterer and most
catholic liar in the kingdom. I'm glad of his luck, but I hadn't the
seeing eye. I shouldn't have chosen him for the most dangerous post in
the army. I should have placed him in the rear to kill the wounded and
violate the dead."
"Well, we shall see. Joan probably knows what is in him better than we
do. And I'll give you another idea. When a person in Joan of Arc's
position tells a man he is brave, he believes it; and believing it is
enough; in fact, to believe yourself brave is to be brave; it is the one
only essential thing."
"Now you've hit it!" cried Noel. "She's got the creating mouth as well as
the seeing eye! Ah, yes, that is the thing. France was cowed and a
coward; Joan of Arc has spoken, and France is marching, with her head
up!"
I was summoned now to write a letter from Joan's dictation. During the
next day and night our several uniforms were made by the tailors, and our
new armor provided. We were beautiful to look upon now, whether clothed
for peace or war. Clothed for peace, in costly stuffs and rich colors,
the Paladin was a tower dyed with the glories of the sunset; plumed and
sashed and iron-clad for war, he was a still statelier thing to look at.
Orders had been issued for the march toward Blois. It was a clear, sharp,
beautiful morning. As our showy great company trotted out in column,
riding two and two, Joan and the Duke of Alencon in the lead, D'Aulon and
the big standard-bearer next, and so on, we made a handsome spectacle, as
you may well imagine; and as we plowed through the cheering crowds, with
Joan bowing her plumed head to left and right and the sun glinting from
her silver mail, the spectators realized that the curtain was rolling up
before their eyes upon the first act of a prodigious drama, and their
rising hopes were expressed in an enthusiasm that increased with each
moment, until at last one seemed to even physically feel the concussion
of the huzzas as well as hear them. Far down the street we heard the
softened strains of wind-blown music, and saw a cloud of lancers moving,
the sun glowing with a subdued light upon the massed armor, but striking
bright upon the soaring lance-heads--a vaguely luminous nebula, so to
speak, with a constellation twinkling above it--and that was our guard of
honor. It joined us, the procession was complete, the first war-march of
Joan of Arc was begun, the curtain was up.
Chapter 12 Joan Puts Heart in Her Army
WE WERE at Blois three days. Oh, that camp, it is one of the treasures of
my memory! Order? There was no more order among those brigands than there
is among the wolves and the hyenas. They went roaring and drinking about,
whooping, shouting, swearing, and entertaining themselves with all manner
of rude and riotous horse-play; and the place was full of loud and lewd
women, and they were no whit behind the men for romps and noise and
fantastics.
It was in the midst of this wild mob that Noel and I had our first
glimpse of La Hire. He answered to our dearest dreams. He was of great
size and of martial bearing, he was cased in mail from head to heel, with
a bushel of swishing plumes on his helmet, and at his side the vast sword
of the time.
He was on his way to pay his respects in state to Joan, and as he passed
through the camp he was restoring order, and proclaiming that the Maid
had come, and he would have no such spectacle as this exposed to the head
of the army. His way of creating order was his own, not borrowed. He did
it with his great fists. As he moved along swearing and admonishing, he
let drive this way, that way, and the other, and wherever his blow
landed, a man went down.
"Damn you!" he said, "staggering and cursing around like this, and the
Commander-in-Chief in the camp! Straighten up!" and he laid the man flat.
What his idea of straightening up was, was his own secret.
We followed the veteran to headquarters, listening, observing,
admiring--yes, devouring, you may say, the pet hero of the boys of France
from our cradles up to that happy day, and their idol and ours. I called
to mind how Joan had once rebuked the Paladin, there in the pastures of
Domremy, for uttering lightly those mighty names, La Hire and the Bastard
of Orleans, and how she said that if she could but be permitted to stand
afar off and let her eyes rest once upon those great men, she would hold
it a privilege. They were to her and the other girls just what they were
to the boys. Well, here was one of them at last--and what was his errand?
It was hard to realize it, and yet it was true; he was coming to uncover
his head before her and take her orders.
While he was quieting a considerable group of his brigands in his
soothing way, near headquarters, we stepped on ahead and got a glimpse of
Joan's military family, the great chiefs of the army, for they had all
arrived now. There they were, six officers of wide renown, handsome men
in beautiful armor, but the Lord High Admiral of France was the
handsomest of them all and had the most gallant bearing.
When La Hire entered, one could see the surprise in his face at Joan's
beauty and extreme youth, and one could see, too, by Joan's glad smile,
that it made her happy to get sight of this hero of her childhood at
last. La Hire bowed low, with his helmet in his gauntleted hand, and made
a bluff but handsome little speech with hardly an oath in it, and one
could see that those two took to each other on the spot.
The visit of ceremony was soon over, and the others went away; but La
Hire stayed, and he and Joan sat there, and he sipped her wine, and they
talked and laughed together like old friends. And presently she gave him
some instructions, in his quality as master of the camp, which made his
breath stand still. For, to begin with, she said that all those loose
women must pack out of the place at once, she wouldn't allow one of them
to remain. Next, the rough carousing must stop, drinking must be brought
within proper and strictly defined limits, and discipline must take the
place of disorder. And finally she climaxed the list of surprises with
this--which nearly lifted him out of his armor:
"Every man who joins my standard must confess before the priest and
absolve himself from sin; and all accepted recruits must be present at
divine service twice a day."
La Hire could not say a word for a good part of a minute, then he said,
in deep dejection:
"Oh, sweet child, they were littered in hell, these poor darlings of
mine! Attend mass? Why, dear heart, they'll see us both damned first!"
And he went on, pouring out a most pathetic stream of arguments and
blasphemy, which broke Joan all up, and made her laugh as she had not
laughed since she played in the Domremy pastures. It was good to hear.
But she stuck to her point; so the soldier yielded, and said all right,
if such were the orders he must obey, and would do the best that was in
him; then he refreshed himself with a lurid explosion of oaths, and said
that if any man in the camp refused to renounce sin and lead a pious
life, he would knock his head off. That started Joan off again; she was
really having a good time, you see. But she would not consent to that
form of conversions. She said they must be voluntary.
La Hire said that that was all right, he wasn't going to kill the
voluntary ones, but only the others.
No matter, none of them must be killed--Joan couldn't have it. She said
that to give a man a chance to volunteer, on pain of death if he didn't,
left him more or less trammeled, and she wanted him to be entirely free.
So the soldier sighed and said he would advertise the mass, but said he
doubted if there was a man in camp that was any more likely to go to it
than he was himself. Then there was another surprise for him, for Joan
said:
"But, dear man, you are going!"
"I? Impossible! Oh, this is lunacy!"
"Oh, no, it isn't. You are going to the service--twice a day."
"Oh, am I dreaming? Am I drunk--or is my hearing playing me false? Why, I
would rather go to--"
"Never mind where. In the morning you are going to begin, and after that
it will come easy. Now don't look downhearted like that. Soon you won't
mind it."
La Hire tried to cheer up, but he was not able to do it. He sighed like a
zephyr, and presently said:
"Well, I'll do it for you, but before I would do it for another, I swear
I--"
"But don't swear. Break it off."
"Break it off? It is impossible! I beg you to--to-- Why--oh, my General,
it is my native speech!"
He begged so hard for grace for his impediment, that Joan left him one
fragment of it; she said he might swear by his bfton, the symbol of his
generalship.
He promised that he would swear only by his bfton when in her presence,
and would try to modify himself elsewhere, but doubted he could manage
it, now that it was so old and stubborn a habit, and such a solace and
support to his declining years.
That tough old lion went away from there a good deal tamed and
civilized--not to say softened and sweetened, for perhaps those
expressions would hardly fit him. Noel and I believed that when he was
away from Joan's influence his old aversions would come up so strong in
him that he could not master them, and so wouldn't go to mass. But we got
up early in the morning to see.
Satan was converted, you see. Well, the rest followed. Joan rode up and
down that camp, and wherever that fair young form appeared in its shining
armor, with that sweet face to grace the vision and perfect it, the rude
host seemed to think they saw the god of war in person, descended out of
the clouds; and first they wondered, then they worshiped. After that, she
could do with them what she would.
In three days it was a clean camp and orderly, and those barbarians were
herding to divine service twice a day like good children. The women were
gone. La Hire was stunned by these marvels; he could not understand them.
He went outside the camp when he wanted to swear. He was that sort of a
man--sinful by nature and habit, but full of superstitious respect for
holy places.
The enthusiasm of the reformed army for Joan, its devotion to her, and
the hot desire had aroused in it to be led against the enemy, exceeded
any manifestations of this sort which La Hire had ever seen before in his
long career. His admiration of it all, and his wonder over the mystery
and miracle of it, were beyond his power to put into words. He had held
this army cheap before, but his pride and confidence in it knew no limits
now. He said:
"Two or three days ago it was afraid of a hen-roost; one could storm the
gates of hell with it now."
Joan and he were inseparable, and a quaint and pleasant contrast they
made. He was so big, she so little; he was so gray and so far along in
his pilgrimage of life, she so youthful; his face was so bronzed and
scarred, hers so fair and pink, so fresh and smooth; she was so gracious,
and he so stern; she was so pure, so innocent, he such a cyclopedia of
sin. In her eye was stored all charity and compassion, in his lightnings;
when her glance fell upon you it seemed to bring benediction and the
peace of God, but with his it was different, generally.
They rode through the camp a dozen times a day, visiting every corner of
it, observing, inspecting, perfecting; and wherever they appeared the
enthusiasm broke forth. They rode side by side, he a great figure of
brawn and muscle, she a little masterwork of roundness and grace; he a
fortress of rusty iron, she a shining statuette of silver; and when the
reformed raiders and bandits caught sight of them they spoke out, with
affection and welcome in their voices, and said:
"There they come--Satan and the Page of Christ!"
All the three days that we were in Blois, Joan worked earnestly and
tirelessly to bring La Hire to God--to rescue him from the bondage of
sin--to breathe into his stormy hear the serenity and peace of religion.
She urged, she begged, she implored him to pray. He stood out, three days
of our stay, begging about piteously to be let off--to be let off from
just that one thing, that impossible thing; he would do anything
else--anything--command, and he would obey--he would go through the fire
for her if she said the word--but spare him this, only this, for he
couldn't pray, had never prayed, he was ignorant of how to frame a
prayer, he had no words to put it in.
And yet--can any believe it?--she carried even that point, she won that
incredible victory. She made La Hire pray. It shows, I think, that
nothing was impossible to Joan of Arc. Yes, he stood there before her and
put up his mailed hands and made a prayer. And it was not borrowed, but
was his very own; he had none to help him frame it, he made it out of his
own head--saying:
"Fair Sir God, I pray you to do by La Hire as he would do by you if you
were La Hire and he were God." [1]
Then he put on his helmet and marched out of Joan's tent as satisfied
with himself as any one might be who had arranged a perplexed and
difficult business to the content and admiration of all the parties
concerned in the matter.
If I had know that he had been praying, I could have understood why he
was feeling so superior, but of course I could not know that.
I was coming to the tent at that moment, and saw him come out, and saw
him march away in that large fashion, and indeed it was fine and
beautiful to see. But when I got to the tent door I stopped and stepped
back, grieved and shocked, for I heard Joan crying, as I mistakenly
thought--crying as if she could not contain nor endure the anguish of her
soul, crying as if she would die. But it was not so, she was
laughing--laughing at La Hire's prayer.
It was not until six-and-thirty years afterward that I found that out,
and then--oh, then I only cried when that picture of young care-free
mirth rose before me out of the blur and mists of that long-vanished
time; for there had come a day between, when God's good gift of laughter
had gone out from me to come again no more in this life.
[1] This prayer has been stolen many times and by many nations in the
past four hundred and sixty years, but it originated with La Hire, and
the fact is of official record in the National Archives of France. We
have the authority of Michelet for this. --TRANSLATOR
Chapter 13 Checked by the Folly of the Wise
WE MARCHED out in great strength and splendor, and took the road toward
Orleans. The initial part of Joan's great dream was realizing itself at
last. It was the first time that any of us youngsters had ever seen an
army, and it was a most stately and imposing spectacle to us. It was
indeed an inspiring sight, that interminable column, stretching away into
the fading distances, and curving itself in and out of the crookedness of
the road like a mighty serpent. Joan rode at the head of it with her
personal staff; then came a body of priests singing the Veni Creator, the
banner of the Cross rising out of their midst; after these the glinting
forest of spears. The several divisions were commanded by the great
Armagnac generals, La Hire, and Marshal de Boussac, the Sire de Retz,
Florent d'Illiers, and Poton de Saintrailles.
Each in his degree was tough, and there were three degrees--tough,
tougher, toughest--and La Hire was the last by a shade, but only a shade.
They were just illustrious official brigands, the whole party; and by
long habits of lawlessness they had lost all acquaintanceship with
obedience, if they had ever had any.
But what was the good of saying that? These independent birds knew no
law. They seldom obeyed the King; they never obeyed him when it didn't
suit them to do it. Would they obey the Maid? In the first place they
wouldn't know how to obey her or anybody else, and in the second place it
was of course not possible for them to take her military character
seriously--that country-girl of seventeen who had been trained for the
complex and terrible business of war--how? By tending sheep.
They had no idea of obeying her except in cases where their veteran
military knowledge and experience showed them that the thing she required
was sound and right when gauged by the regular military standards. Were
they to blame for this attitude? I should think not. Old war-worn
captains are hard-headed, practical men. They do not easily believe in
the ability of ignorant children to plan campaigns and command armies. No
general that ever lived could have taken Joan seriously (militarily)
before she raised the siege of Orleans and followed it with the great
campaign of the Loire.
Did they consider Joan valueless? Far from it. They valued her as the
fruitful earth values the sun--they fully believed she could produce the
crop, but that it was in their line of business, not hers, to take it
off. They had a deep and superstitious reverence for her as being endowed
with a mysterious supernatural something that was able to do a mighty
thing which they were powerless to do--blow the breath of life and valor
into the dead corpses of cowed armies and turn them into heroes.
To their minds they were everything with her, but nothing without her.
She could inspire the soldiers and fit them for battle--but fight the
battle herself? Oh, nonsense--that was their function. They, the
generals, would fight the battles, Joan would give the victory. That was
their idea--an unconscious paraphrase of Joan's reply to the Dominican.
So they began by playing a deception upon her. She had a clear idea of
how she meant to proceed. It was her purpose to march boldly upon Orleans
by the north bank of the Loire. She gave that order to her generals. They
said to themselves, "The idea is insane--it is blunder No. 1; it is what
might have been expected of this child who is ignorant of war." They
privately sent the word to the Bastard of Orleans. He also recognized the
insanity of it--at least he though he did--and privately advised the
generals to get around the order in some way.
They did it by deceiving Joan. She trusted those people, she was not
expecting this sort of treatment, and was not on the lookout for it. It
was a lesson to her; she saw to it that the game was not played a second
time.
Why was Joan's idea insane, from the generals' point of view, but not
from hers? Because her plan was to raise the siege immediately, by
fighting, while theirs was to besiege the besiegers and starve them out
by closing their communications--a plan which would require months in the
consummation.
The English had built a fence of strong fortresses called bastilles
around Orleans--fortresses which closed all the gates of the city but
one. To the French generals the idea of trying to fight their way past
those fortresses and lead the army into Orleans was preposterous; they
believed that the result would be the army's destruction. One may not
doubt that their opinion was militarily sound--no, would have been, but
for one circumstance which they overlooked. That was this: the English
soldiers were in a demoralized condition of superstitious terror; they
had become satisfied that the Maid was in league with Satan. By reason of
this a good deal of their courage had oozed out and vanished. On the
other hand, the Maid'' soldiers were full of courage, enthusiasm, and
zeal.
Joan could have marched by the English forts. However, it was not to be.
She had been cheated out of her first chance to strike a heavy blow for
her country.
In camp that night she slept in her armor on the ground. It was a cold
night, and she was nearly as stiff as her armor itself when we resumed
the march in the morning, for iron is not good material for a blanket.
However, her joy in being now so far on her way to the theater of her
mission was fire enough to warm her, and it soon did it.
Her enthusiasm and impatience rose higher and higher with every mile of
progress; but at last we reached Olivet, and down it went, and
indignation took its place. For she saw the trick that had been played
upon her--the river lay between us and Orleans.
She was for attacking one of the three bastilles that were on our side of
the river and forcing access to the bridge which it guarded (a project
which, if successful, would raise the siege instantly), but the
long-ingrained fear of the English came upon her generals and they
implored her not to make the attempt. The soldiers wanted to attack, but
had to suffer disappointment. So we moved on and came to a halt at a
point opposite Checy, six miles above Orleans.
Dunois, Bastard of Orleans, with a body of knights and citizens, came up
from the city to welcome Joan. Joan was still burning with resentment
over the trick that had been put upon her, and was not in the mood for
soft speeches, even to reversed military idols of her childhood. She
said:
"Are you the bastard?"
"Yes, I am he, and am right glad of your coming."
"And did you advise that I be brought by this side of the river instead
of straight to Talbot and the English?"
Her high manner abashed him, and he was not able to answer with anything
like a confident promptness, but with many hesitations and partial
excuses he managed to get out the confession that for what he and the
council had regarded as imperative military reasons they so advised.
"In God's name," said Joan, "my Lord's counsel is safer and wiser than
yours. You thought to deceive me, but you have deceived yourselves, for I
bring you the best help that ever knight or city had; for it is God's
help, not sent for love of me, but by God's pleasure. At the prayer of
St. Louis and St. Charlemagne He has had pity on Orleans, and will not
suffer the enemy to have both the Duke of Orleans and his city. The
provisions to save the starving people are here, the boats are below the
city, the wind is contrary, they cannot come up hither. Now then, tell
me, in God's name, you who are so wise, what that council of yours was
thinking about, to invent this foolish difficulty."
Dunois and the rest fumbled around the matter a moment, then gave in and
conceded that a blunder had been made.
"Yes, a blunder has been made," said Joan, "and except God take your
proper work upon Himself and change the wind and correct your blunder for
you, there is none else that can devise a remedy."
Some of these people began to perceive that with all her technical
ignorance she had practical good sense, and that with all her native
sweetness and charm she was not the right kind of a person to play with.
Presently God did take the blunder in hand, and by His grace the wind did
change. So the fleet of boats came up and went away loaded with
provisions and cattle, and conveyed that welcome succor to the hungry
city, managing the matter successfully under protection of a sortie from
the walls against the bastille of St. Loup. Then Joan began on the
Bastard again:
"You see here the army?"
"Yes."
"It is here on this side by advice of your council?"
"Yes."
"Now, in God's name, can that wise council explain why it is better to
have it here than it would be to have it in the bottom of the sea?"
Dunois made some wandering attempts to explain the inexplicable and
excuse the inexcusable, but Joan cut him short and said:
"Answer me this, good sir--has the army any value on this side of the
river?"
The Bastard confessed that it hadn't--that is, in view of the plan of
campaign which she had devised and decreed.
"And yet, knowing this, you had the hardihood to disobey my orders. Since
the army's place is on the other side, will you explain to me how it is
to get there?"
The whole size of the needless muddle was apparent. Evasions were of no
use; therefore Dunois admitted that there was no way to correct the
blunder but to send the army all the way back to Blois, and let it begin
over again and come up on the other side this time, according to Joan's
original plan.
Any other girl, after winning such a triumph as this over a veteran
soldier of old renown, might have exulted a little and been excusable for
it, but Joan showed no disposition of this sort. She dropped a word or
two of grief over the precious time that must be lost, then began at once
to issue commands for the march back. She sorrowed to see her army go;
for she said its heart was great and its enthusiasm high, and that with
it at her back she did not fear to face all the might of England.
All arrangements having been completed for the return of the main body of
the army, she took the Bastard and La Hire and a thousand men and went
down to Orleans, where all the town was in a fever of impatience to have
sight of her face. It was eight in the evening when she and the troops
rode in at the Burgundy gate, with the Paladin preceding her with her
standard. She was riding a white horse, and she carried in her hand the
sacred sword of Fierbois. You should have seen Orleans then. What a
picture it was! Such black seas of people, such a starry firmament of
torches, such roaring whirlwinds of welcome, such booming of bells and
thundering of cannon! It was as if the world was come to an end.
Everywhere in the glare of the torches one saw rank upon rank of upturned
white faces, the mouths wide open, shouting, and the unchecked tears
running down; Joan forged her slow way through the solid masses, her
mailed form projecting above the pavement of heads like a silver statue.
The people about her struggled along, gazing up at her through their
tears with the rapt look of men and women who believe they are seeing one
who is divine; and always her feet were being kissed by grateful folk,
and such as failed of that privilege touched her horse and then kissed
their fingers.
Nothing that Joan did escaped notice; everything she did was commented
upon and applauded. You could hear the remarks going all the time.
"There--she's smiling--see!"
"Now she's taking her little plumed cap off to somebody--ah, it's fine
and graceful!"
"She's patting that woman on the head with her gauntlet."
"Oh, she was born on a horse--see her turn in her saddle, and kiss the
hilt of her sword to the ladies in the window that threw the flowers
down."
"Now there's a poor woman lifting up a child--she's kissed it--oh, she's
divine!"
"What a dainty little figure it is, and what a lovely face--and such
color and animation!"
Joan's slender long banner streaming backward had an accident--the fringe
caught fire from a torch. She leaned forward and crushed the flame in her
hand.
"She's not afraid of fire nor anything!" they shouted, and delivered a
storm of admiring applause that made everything quake.
She rode to the cathedral and gave thanks to God, and the people crammed
the place and added their devotions to hers; then she took up her march
again and picked her slow way through the crowds and the wilderness of
torches to the house of Jacques Boucher, treasurer of the Duke of
Orleans, where she was to be the guest of his wife as long as she stayed
in the city, and have his young daughter for comrade and room-mate. The
delirium of the people went on the rest of the night, and with it the
clamor of the joy-bells and the welcoming cannon.
Joan of Arc had stepped upon her stage at last, and was ready to begin.
Chapter 14 What the English Answered
SHE WAS ready, but must sit down and wait until there was an army to work
with.
Next morning, Saturday, April 30, 1429, she set about inquiring after the
messenger who carried her proclamation to the English from Blois--the one
which she had dictated at Poitiers. Here is a copy of it. It is a
remarkable document, for several reasons: for its matter-of-fact
directness, for its high spirit and forcible diction, and for its naive
confidence in her ability to achieve the prodigious task which she had
laid upon herself, or which had been laid upon her--which you please. All
through it you seem to see the pomps of war and hear the rumbling of the
drums. In it Joan's warrior soul is revealed, and for the moment the soft
little shepherdess has disappeared from your view. This untaught
country-damsel, unused to dictating anything at all to anybody, much less
documents of state to kings and generals, poured out this procession of
vigorous sentences as fluently as if this sort of work had been her trade
from childhood:
JESUS MARIA King of England and you Duke of Bedford who call yourself
Regent of France; William de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk; and you Thomas
Lord Scales, who style yourselves lieutenants of the said Bedford--do
right to the King of Heaven. Render to the Maid who is sent by God the
keys of all the good towns you have taken and violated in France. She is
sent hither by God, to restore the blood royal. She is very ready to make
peace if you will do her right by giving up France and paying for what
you have held. And you archers, companions of war, noble and otherwise,
who are before the good city of Orleans, begone into your own land in
God's name, or expect news from the Maid who will shortly go to see you
to your very great hurt. King of England, if you do not so, I am chief of
war, and whenever I shall find your people in France, I will drive them
out, willing or not willing; and if they do not obey I will slay them
all, but if they obey, I will have them to mercy. I am come hither by
God, the King of Heaven, body for body, to put you our of France, in
spite of those who would work treason and mischief against the kingdom.
Think not you shall ever hold the kingdom from the King of Heaven, the
Son of the Blessed Mary; King Charles shall hold it, for God wills it so,
and has revealed it to him by the Maid. If you believe not the news sent
by God through the Maid, wherever we shall met you we will strike boldly
and make such a noise as has not been in France these thousand years. Be
sure that God can send more strength to the Maid than you can bring to
any assault against her and her good men-at-arms; and then we shall see
who has the better right, the King of Heaven, or you. Duke of Bedford,
the Maid prays you not to bring about your own destruction. If you do her
right, you may yet go in her company where the French shall do the finest
deed that has been done in Christendom, and if you do not, you shall be
reminded shortly of your great wrongs.
In that closing sentence she invites them to go on crusade with her to
rescue the Holy Sepulcher. No answer had been returned to this
proclamation, and the messenger himself had not come back.
So now she sent her two heralds with a new letter warning the English to
raise the siege and requiring them to restore that missing messenger. The
heralds came back without him. All they brought was notice from the
English to Joan that they would presently catch her and burn her if she
did not clear out now while she had a chance, and "go back to her proper
trade of minding cows."
She held her peace, only saying it was a pity that the English would
persist in inviting present disaster and eventual destruction when she
was "doing all she could to get them out of the country with their lives
still in their bodies."
Presently she thought of an arrangement that might be acceptable, and
said to the heralds, "Go back and say to Lord Talbot this, from me: 'Come
out of your bastilles with your host, and I will come with mine; if I
beat you, go in peace out of France; if you beat me, burn me, according
to your desire.'"
I did not hear this, but Dunois did, and spoke of it. The challenge was
refused.
Sunday morning her Voices or some instinct gave her a warning, and she
sent Dunois to Blois to take command of the army and hurry it to Orleans.
It was a wise move, for he found Regnault de Chartres and some more of
the King's pet rascals there trying their best to disperse the army, and
crippling all the efforts of Joan's generals to head it for Orleans. They
were a fine lot, those miscreants. They turned their attention to Dunois
now, but he had balked Joan once, with unpleasant results to himself, and
was not minded to meddle in that way again. He soon had the army moving.
Chapter 15 My Exquisite Poem Goes to Smash
WE OF the personal staff were in fairyland now, during the few days that
we waited for the return of the army. We went into society. To our two
knights this was not a novelty, but to us young villagers it was a new
and wonderful life. Any position of any sort near the person of the Maid
of Vaucouleurs conferred high distinction upon the holder and caused his
society to be courted; and so the D'Arc brothers, and Noel, and the
Paladin, humble peasants at home, were gentlemen here, personages of
weight and influence. It was fine to see how soon their country
diffidences and awkwardnesses melted away under this pleasant sun of
deference and disappeared, and how lightly and easily they took to their
new atmosphere. The Paladin was as happy as it was possible for any one
in this earth to be. His tongue went all the time, and daily he got new
delight out of hearing himself talk. He began to enlarge his ancestry and
spread it out all around, and ennoble it right and left, and it was not
long until it consisted almost entirely of dukes. He worked up his old
battles and tricked them out with fresh splendors; also with new terrors,
for he added artillery now. We had seen cannon for the first time at
Blois--a few pieces--here there was plenty of it, and now and then we had
the impressive spectacle of a huge English bastille hidden from sight in
a mountain of smoke from its own guns, with lances of red flame darting
through it; and this grand picture, along with the quaking thunders
pounding away in the heart of it, inflamed the Paladin's imagination and
enabled him to dress out those ambuscade-skirmishes of ours with a
sublimity which made it impossible for any to recognize them at all
except people who had not been there.
You may suspect that there was a special inspiration for these great
efforts of the Paladin's, and there was. It was the daughter of the
house, Catherine Boucher, who was eighteen, and gentle and lovely in her
ways, and very beautiful. I think she might have been as beautiful as
Joan herself, if she had had Joan's eyes. But that could never be. There
was never but that one pair, there will never be another. Joan's eyes
were deep and rich and wonderful beyond anything merely earthly. They
spoke all the languages--they had no need of words. They produced all
effects--and just by a glance, just a single glance; a glance that could
convict a liar of his lie and make him confess it; that could bring down
a proud man's pride and make him humble; that could put courage into a
coward and strike dead the courage of the bravest; that could appease
resentments and real hatreds; that could make the doubter believe and the
hopeless hope again; that could purify the impure mind; that could
persuade--ah, there it is--persuasion! that is the word; what or who is
it that it couldn't persuade? The maniac of Domremy--the fairy-banishing
priest--the reverend tribunal of Toul--the doubting and superstitious
Laxart--the obstinate veteran of Vaucouleurs--the characterless heir of
France--the sages and scholars of the Parliament and University of
Poitiers--the darling of Satan, La Hire--the masterless Bastard of
Orleans, accustomed to acknowledge no way as right and rational but his
own--these were the trophies of that great gift that made her the wonder
and mystery that she was.
We mingled companionably with the great folk who flocked to the big house
to make Joan's acquaintance, and they made much of us and we lived in the
clouds, so to speak. But what we preferred even to this happiness was the
quieter occasions, when the formal guests were gone and the family and a
few dozen of its familiar friends were gathered together for a social
good time. It was then that we did our best, we five youngsters, with
such fascinations as we had, and the chief object of them was Catherine.
None of us had ever been in love been in love before, and now we had the
misfortune to all fall in love with the same person at the same
time--which was the first moment we saw her. She was a merry heart, and
full of life, and I still remember tenderly those few evenings that I was
permitted to have my share of her dear society and of comradeship with
that little company of charming people.
The Paladin made us all jealous the first night, for when he got fairly
started on those battles of his he had everything to himself, and there
was no use in anybody else's trying to get any attention. Those people
had been living in the midst of real war for seven months; and to hear
this windy giant lay out his imaginary campaigns and fairly swim in blood
and spatter it all around, entertained them to the verge of the grave.
Catherine was like to die, for pure enjoyment. She didn't laugh loud--we,
of course, wished she would--but kept in the shelter of a fan, and shook
until there was danger that she would unhitch her ribs from her spine.
Then when the Paladin had got done with a battle and we began to feel
thankful and hope for a change, she would speak up in a way that was so
sweet and persuasive that it rankled in me, and ask him about some detail
or other in the early part of his battle which she said had greatly
interested her, and would he be so good as to describe that part again
and with a little more particularity?--which of course precipitated the
whole battle on us, again, with a hundred lies added that had been
overlooked before.
I do not know how to make you realize the pain I suffered. I had never
been jealous before, and it seemed intolerable that this creature should
have this good fortune which he was so ill entitled to, and I have to sit
and see myself neglected when I was so longing for the least little
attention out of the thousand that this beloved girl was lavishing on
him. I was near her, and tried two or three times to get started on some
of the things that I had done in those battles--and I felt ashamed of
myself, too, for stooping to such a business--but she cared for nothing
but his battles, and could not be got to listen; and presently when one
of my attempts caused her to lose some precious rag or other of his
mendacities and she asked him to repeat, thus bringing on a new
engagement, of course, and increasing the havoc and carnage tenfold, I
felt so humiliated by this pitiful miscarriage of mine that I gave up and
tried no more.
The others were as outraged by the Paladin's selfish conduct as I
was--and by his grand luck, too, of course--perhaps, indeed, that was the
main hurt. We talked our trouble over together, which was natural, for
rivals become brothers when a common affliction assails them and a common
enemy bears off the victory.
Each of us could do things that would please and get notice if it were
not for this person, who occupied all the time and gave others no chance.
I had made a poem, taking a whole night to it--a poem in which I most
happily and delicately celebrated that sweet girl's charms, without
mentioning her name, but any one could see who was meant; for the bare
title--"The Rose of Orleans"--would reveal that, as it seemed to me. It
pictured this pure and dainty white rose as growing up out of the rude
soil of war and looking abroad out of its tender eyes upon the horrid
machinery of death, and then--note this conceit--it blushes for the
sinful nature of man, and turns red in a single night. Becomes a red
rose, you see--a rose that was white before. The idea was my own, and
quite new. Then it sent its sweet perfume out over the embattled city,
and when the beleaguering forces smelt it they laid down their arms and
wept. This was also my own idea, and new. That closed that part of the
poem; then I put her into the similitude of the firmament--not the whole
of it, but only part. That is to say, she was the moon, and all the
constellations were following her about, their hearts in flames for love
of her, but she would not halt, she would not listen, for 'twas thought
she loved another. 'Twas thought she loved a poor unworthy suppliant who
was upon the earth, facing danger, death, and possible mutilation in the
bloody field, waging relentless war against a heartless foe to save her
from an all too early grave, and her city from destruction. And when the
sad pursuing constellations came to know and realize the bitter sorrow
that was come upon them --note this idea--their hearts broke and their
tears gushed forth, filling the vault of heaven with a fiery splendor,
for those tears were falling stars. It was a rash idea, but beautiful;
beautiful and pathetic; wonderfully pathetic, the way I had it, with the
rhyme and all to help. At the end of each verse there was a two-line
refrain pitying the poor earthly lover separated so far, and perhaps
forever, from her he loved so well, and growing always paler and weaker
and thinner in his agony as he neared the cruel grave--the most touching
thing--even the boys themselves could hardly keep back their tears, the
way Noel said those lines. There were eight four-line stanzas in the
first end of the poem--the end about the rose, the horticultural end, as
you may say, if that is not too large a name for such a little poem--and
eight in the astronomical end--sixteen stanzas altogether, and I could
have made it a hundred and fifty if I had wanted to, I was so inspired
and so all swelled up with beautiful thoughts and fancies; but that would
have been too many to sing or recite before a company that way, whereas
sixteen was just right, and could be done over again if desired. The boys
were amazed that I could make such a poem as that out of my own head, and
so was I, of course, it being as much a surprise to me as it could be to
anybody, for I did not know that it was in me. If any had asked me a
single day before if it was in me, I should have told them frankly no, it
was not.
That is the way with us; we may go on half of our life not knowing such a
thing is in us, when in reality it was there all the time, and all we
needed was something to turn up that would call for it. Indeed, it was
always so without family. My grandfather had a cancer, and they never
knew what was the matter with him till he died, and he didn't know
himself. It is wonderful how gifts and diseases can be concealed in that
way. All that was necessary in my case was for this lovely and inspiring
girl to cross my path, and out came the poem, and no more trouble to me
to word it and rhyme it and perfect it than it is to stone a dog. No, I
should have said it was not in me; but it was.
The boys couldn't say enough about it, they were so charmed and
astonished. The thing that pleased them the most was the way it would do
the Paladin's business for him. They forgot everything in their anxiety
to get him shelved and silenced. Noel Rainguesson was clear beside
himself with admiration of the poem, and wished he could do such a thing,
but it was out of his line, and he couldn't, of course. He had it by
heart in half an hour, and there was never anything so pathetic and
beautiful as the way he recited it. For that was just his gift--that and
mimicry. He could recite anything better than anybody in the world, and
he could take of La Hire to the very life--or anybody else, for that
matter. Now I never could recite worth a farthing; and when I tried with
this poem the boys wouldn't let me finish; they would nave nobody but
Noel. So then, as I wanted the poem to make the best possible impression
on Catherine and the company, I told Noel he might do the reciting. Never
was anybody so delighted. He could hardly believe that I was in earnest,
but I was. I said that to have them know that I was the author of it
would be enough for me. The boys were full of exultation, and Noel said
if he could just get one chance at those people it would be all he would
ask; he would make them realize that there was something higher and finer
than war-lies to be had here.
But how to get the opportunity--that was the difficulty. We invented
several schemes that promised fairly, and at last we hit upon one that
was sure. That was, to let the Paladin get a good start in a manufactured
battle, and then send in a false call for him, and as soon as he was out
of the room, have Noel take his place and finish the battle himself in
the Paladin's own style, imitated to a shade. That would get great
applause, and win the house's favor and put it in the right mood to hear
the poem. The two triumphs together with finish the
Standard-Bearer--modify him, anyway, to a certainty, and give the rest of
us a chance for the future.
So the next night I kept out of the way until the Paladin had got his
start and was sweeping down upon the enemy like a whirlwind at the head
of his corps, then I stepped within the door in my official uniform and
announced that a messenger from General La Hire's quarters desired speech
with the Standard-Bearer. He left the room, and Noel took his place and
said that the interruption was to be deplored, but that fortunately he
was personally acquainted with the details of the battle himself, and if
permitted would be glad to state them to the company. Then without
waiting for the permission he turned himself to the Paladin--a dwarfed
Paladin, of course--with manner, tones, gestures, attitudes, everything
exact, and went right on with the battle, and it would be impossible to
imagine a more perfectly and minutely ridiculous imitation than he
furnished to those shrieking people. They went into spasms, convulsions,
frenzies of laughter, and the tears flowed down their cheeks in rivulets.
The more they laughed, the more inspires Noel grew with his theme and the
greater marvels he worked, till really the laughter was not properly
laughing any more, but screaming. Blessedest feature of all, Catherine
Boucher was dying with ecstasies, and presently there was little left of
her but gasps and suffocations. Victory? It was a perfect Agincourt.
The Paladin was gone only a couple of minutes; he found out at once that
a trick had been played on him, so he came back. When he approached the
door he heard Noel ranting in there and recognized the state of the case;
so he remained near the door but out of sight, and heard the performance
through to the end. The applause Noel got when he finished was wonderful;
and they kept it up and kept it up, clapping their hands like mad, and
shouting to him to do it over again.
But Noel was clever. He knew the very best background for a poem of deep
and refined sentiment and pathetic melancholy was one where great and
satisfying merriment had prepared the spirit for the powerful contrast.
So he paused until all was quiet, then his face grew grave and assumed an
impressive aspect, and at once all faces sobered in sympathy and took on
a look of wondering and expectant interest. Now he began in a low but
distinct voice the opening verses of The Rose. As he breathed the
rhythmic measures forth, and one gracious line after another fell upon
those enchanted ears in that deep hush, one could catch, on every hand,
half-audible ejaculations of "How lovely--how beautiful--how exquisite!"
By this time the Paladin, who had gone away for a moment with the opening
of the poem, was back again, and had stepped within the door. He stood
there now, resting his great frame against the wall and gazing toward the
reciter like one entranced. When Noel got to the second part, and that
heart-breaking refrain began to melt and move all listeners, the Paladin
began to wipe away tears with the back of first one hand and then the
other. The next time the refrain was repeated he got to snuffling, and
sort of half sobbing, and went to wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his
doublet. He was so conspicuous that he embarrassed Noel a little, and
also had an ill effect upon the audience. With the next repetition he
broke quite down and began to cry like a calf, which ruined all the
effect and started many to the audience to laughing. Then he went on from
bad to worse, until I never saw such a spectacle; for he fetched out a
towel from under his doublet and began to swab his eyes with it and let
go the most infernal bellowings mixed up with sobbings and groanings and
retchings and barkings and coughings and snortings and screamings and
howlings --and he twisted himself about on his heels and squirmed this
way and that, still pouring out that brutal clamor and flourishing his
towel in the air and swabbing again and wringing it out. Hear? You
couldn't hear yourself think. Noel was wholly drowned out and silenced,
and those people were laughing the very lungs out of themselves. It was
the most degrading sight that ever was. Now I heard the clankety-clank
that plate-armor makes when the man that is in it is running, and then
alongside my head there burst out the most inhuman explosion of laughter
that ever rent the drum of a person's ear, and I looked, and it was La
Hire; and the stood there with his gauntlets on his hips and his head
tilted back and his jaws spread to that degree to let out his hurricanes
and his thunders that it amounted to indecent exposure, for you could see
everything that was in him. Only one thing more and worse could happen,
and it happened: at the other door I saw the flurry and bustle and
bowings and scrapings of officials and flunkeys which means that some
great personage is coming--then Joan of Arc stepped in, and the house
rose! Yes, and tried to shut its indecorous mouth and make itself grave
and proper; but when it saw the Maid herself go to laughing, it thanked
God for this mercy and the earthquake that followed.
Such things make a life of bitterness, and I do not wish to dwell upon
them. The effect of the poem was spoiled.
Chapter 16 The Finding of the Dwarf
THIS EPISODE disagreed with me and I was not able to leave my bed the
next day. The others were in the same condition. But for this, one or
another of us might have had the good luck that fell to the Paladin's
share that day; but it is observable that God in His compassion sends the
good luck to such as are ill equipped with gifts, as compensation for
their defect, but requires such as are more fortunately endowed to get by
labor and talent what those others get by chance. It was Noel who said
this, and it seemed to me to be well and justly thought.
The Paladin, going about the town all the day in order to be followed and
admired and overhear the people say in an awed voice, "'Ssh! --look, it
is the Standard-Bearer of Joan of Arc!" had speech with all sorts and
conditions of folk, and he learned from some boatmen that there was a
stir of some kind going on in the bastilles on the other side of the
river; and in the evening, seeking further, he found a deserter from the
fortress called the "Augustins," who said that the English were going to
send me over to strengthen the garrisons on our side during the darkness
of the night, and were exulting greatly, for they meant to spring upon
Dunois and the army when it was passing the bastilles and destroy it; a
thing quite easy to do, since the "Witch" would not be there, and without
her presence the army would do like the French armies of these many years
past--drop their weapons and run when they saw an English face.
It was ten at night when the Paladin brought this news and asked leave to
speak to Joan, and I was up and on duty then. It was a bitter stroke to
me to see what a chance I had lost. Joan made searching inquiries, and
satisfied herself that the word was true, then she made this annoying
remark:
"You have done well, and you have my thanks. It may be that you have
prevented a disaster. Your name and service shall receive official
mention."
Then he bowed low, and when he rose he was eleven feet high. As he
swelled out past me he covertly pulled down the corner of his eye with
his finger and muttered part of that defiled refrain, "Oh, tears, ah,
tears, oh, sad sweet tears!--name in General Orders--personal mention to
the King, you see!"
I wished Joan could have seen his conduct, but she was busy thinking what
she would do. Then she had me fetch the knight Jean de Metz, and in a
minute he was off for La Hire's quarters with orders for him and the Lord
de Villars and Florent d'Illiers to report to her at five o'clock next
morning with five hundred picked men well mounted. The histories say half
past four, but it is not true, I heard the order given.
We were on our way at five to the minute, and encountered the head of the
arriving column between six and seven, a couple of leagues from the city.
Dunois was pleased, for the army had begun to get restive and show
uneasiness now that it was getting so near to the dreaded bastilles. But
that all disappeared now, as the word ran down the line, with a huzza
that swept along the length of it like a wave, that the Maid was come.
Dunois asked her to halt and let the column pass in review, so that the
men could be sure that the reports of her presence was not a ruse to
revive their courage. So she took position at the side of the road with
her staff, and the battalions swung by with a martial stride, huzzaing.
Joan was armed, except her head. She was wearing the cunning little
velvet cap with the mass of curved white ostrich plumes tumbling over its
edges which the city of Orleans had given her the night she arrived--the
one that is in the picture that hangs in the H"tel de Ville at Rouen. She
was looking about fifteen. The sight of soldiers always set her blood to
leaping, and lit the fires in her eyes and brought the warm rich color to
her cheeks; it was then that you saw that she was too beautiful to be of
the earth, or at any rate that there was a subtle something somewhere
about her beauty that differed it from the human types of your experience
and exalted it above them.
In the train of wains laden with supplies a man lay on top of the goods.
He was stretched out on his back, and his hands were tied together with
ropes, and also his ankles. Joan signed to the officer in charge of that
division of the train to come to her, and he rode up and saluted.
"What is he that is bound there?" she asked.
"A prisoner, General."
"What is his offense?"
"He is a deserter."
"What is to be done with him?"
"He will be hanged, but it was not convenient on the march, and there was
no hurry."
"Tell me about him."
"He is a good soldier, but he asked leave to go and see his wife who was
dying, he said, but it could not be granted; so he went without leave.
Meanwhile the march began, and he only overtook us yesterday evening."
"Overtook you? Did he come of his own will?"
"Yes, it was of his own will."
"He a deserter! Name of God! Bring him to me."
The officer rode forward and loosed the man's feet and brought him back
with his hands still tied. What a figure he was--a good seven feet high,
and built for business! He had a strong face; he had an unkempt shock of
black hair which showed up a striking way when the officer removed his
morion for him; for weapon he had a big ax in his broad leathern belt.
Standing by Joan's horse, he made Joan look littler than ever, for his
head was about on a level with her own. His face was profoundly
melancholy; all interest in life seemed to be dead in the man. Joan said:
"Hold up your hands."
The man's head was down. He lifted it when he heard that soft friendly
voice, and there was a wistful something in his face which made one think
that there had been music in it for him and that he would like to hear it
again. When he raised his hands Joan laid her sword to his bonds, but the
officer said with apprehension:
"Ah, madam--my General!"
"What is it?" she said.
"He is under sentence!"
"Yes, I know. I am responsible for him"; and she cut the bonds. They had
lacerated his wrists, and they were bleeding. "Ah, pitiful!" she said;
"blood--I do not like it"; and she shrank from the sight. But only for a
moment. "Give me something, somebody, to bandage his wrists with."
The officer said:
"Ah, my General! it is not fitting. Let me bring another to do it."
"Another? De par le Dieu! You would seek far to find one that can do it
better than I, for I learned it long ago among both men and beasts. And I
can tie better than those that did this; if I had tied him the ropes had
not cut his flesh."
The man looked on silent, while he was being bandaged, stealing a furtive
glance at Joan's face occasionally, such as an animal might that is
receiving a kindness form an unexpected quarter and is gropingly trying
to reconcile the act with its source. All the staff had forgotten the
huzzaing army drifting by in its rolling clouds of dust, to crane their
necks and watch the bandaging as if it was the most interesting and
absorbing novelty that ever was. I have often seen people do like
that--get entirely lost in the simplest trifle, when it is something that
is out of their line. Now there in Poitiers, once, I saw two bishops and
a dozen of those grave and famous scholars grouped together watching a
man paint a sign on a shop; they didn't breathe, they were as good as
dead; and when it began to sprinkle they didn't know it at first; then
they noticed it, and each man hove a deep sigh, and glanced up with a
surprised look as wondering to see the others there, and how he came to
be there himself--but that is the way with people, as I have said. There
is no way of accounting for people. You have to take them as they are.
"There," said Joan at last, pleased with her success; "another could have
done it no better--not as well, I think. Tell me--what is it you did?
Tell me all."
The giant said:
"It was this way, my angel. My mother died, then my three little
children, one after the other, all in two years. It was the famine;
others fared so--it was God's will. I saw them die; I had that grace; and
I buried them. Then when my poor wife's fate was come, I begged for leave
to go to her--she who was so dear to me--she who was all I had; I begged
on my knees. But they would not let me. Could I let her die, friendless
and alone? Could I let her die believing I would not come? Would she let
me die and she not come--with her feet free to do it if she would, and no
cost upon it but only her life? Ah, she would come--she would come
through the fire! So I went. I saw her. She died in my arms. I buried
her. Then the army was gone. I had trouble to overtake it, but my legs
are long and there are many hours in a day; I overtook it last night."
Joan said, musingly, as if she were thinking aloud:
"It sounds true. If true, it were no great harm to suspend the law this
one time--any would say that. It may not be true, but if it is true--"
She turned suddenly to the man and said, "I would see your eyes--look
up!" The eyes of the two met, and Joan said to the officer, "This man is
pardoned. Give you good day; you may go." Then she said to the man, "Did
you know it was death to come back to the army?"
"Yes," he said, "I knew it."
"Then why did you do it?"
The man said, quite simply:
"Because it was death. She was all I had. There was nothing left to
love."
"Ah, yes, there was--France! The children of France have always their
mother--they cannot be left with nothing to love. You shall live--and you
shall serve France--"
"I will serve you!"
--"you shall fight for France--"
"I will fight for you!"
"You shall be France's soldier--"
"I will be your soldier!"
--"you shall give all your heart to France--"
"I will give all my heart to you--and all my soul, if I have one--and all
my strength, which is great--for I was dead and am alive again; I had
nothing to live for, but now I have! You are France for me. You are my
France, and I will have no other."
Joan smiled, and was touched and pleased at the man's grave
enthusiasm--solemn enthusiasm, one may call it, for the manner of it was
deeper than mere gravity--and she said:
"Well, it shall be as you will. What are you called?"
The man answered with unsmiling simplicity:
"They call me the Dwarf, but I think it is more in jest than otherwise."
It made Joan laugh, and she said:
"It has something of that look truly! What is the office of that vast
ax?"
The soldier replied with the same gravity--which must have been born to
him, it sat upon him so naturally:
"It is to persuade persons to respect France."
Joan laughed again, and said:
"Have you given many lessons?"
"Ah, indeed, yes--many."
"The pupils behaved to suit you, afterward?"
"Yes; it made them quiet--quite pleasant and quiet."
"I should think it would happen so. Would you like to be my
man-at-arms?--orderly, sentinel, or something like that?"
"If I may!"
"Then you shall. You shall have proper armor, and shall go on teaching
your art. Take one of those led horses there, and follow the staff when
we move."
That is how we came by the Dwarf; and a good fellow he was. Joan picked
him out on sight, but it wasn't a mistake; no one could be faithfuler
than he was, and he was a devil and the son of a devil when he turned
himself loose with his ax. He was so big that he made the Paladin look
like an ordinary man. He liked to like people, therefore people liked
him. He liked us boys from the start; and he liked the knights, and liked
pretty much everybody he came across; but he thought more of a paring of
Joan's finger-nail than he did of all the rest of the world put together.
Yes, that is where we got him--stretched on the wain, going to his death,
poor chap, and nobody to say a good word for him. He was a good find.
Why, the knights treated him almost like an equal--it is the honest
truth; that is the sort of a man he was. They called him the Bastille
sometimes, and sometimes they called him Hellfire, which was on account
of his warm and sumptuous style in battle, and you know they wouldn't
have given him pet names if they hadn't had a good deal of affection for
him.
To the Dwarf, Joan was France, the spirit of France made flesh--he never
got away from that idea that he had started with; and God knows it was
the true one. That was a humble eye to see so great a truth where some
others failed. To me that seems quite remarkable. And yet, after all, it
was, in a way, just what nations do. When they love a great and noble
thing, they embody it--they want it so that they can see it with their
eyes; like liberty, for instance. They are not content with the cloudy
abstract idea, they make a beautiful statue of it, and then their beloved
idea is substantial and they can look at it and worship it. And so it is
as I say; to the Dwarf, Joan was our country embodied, our country made
visible flesh cast in a gracious form. When she stood before others, they
saw Joan of Arc, but he saw France.
Sometimes he would speak of her by that name. It shows you how the idea
was embedded in his mind, and how real it was to him. The world has
called our kings by it, but I know of none of them who has had so good a
right as she to that sublime title.
When the march past was finished, Joan returned to the front and rode at
the head of the column. When we began to file past those grim bastilles
and could glimpse the men within, standing to their guns and ready to
empty death into our ranks, such a faintness came over me and such a
sickness that all things seemed to turn dim and swim before my eyes; and
the other boys looked droopy, too, I thought--including the Paladin,
although I do not know this for certain, because he was ahead of me and I
had to keep my eyes out toward the bastille side, because I could wince
better when I saw what to wince at.
But Joan was at home--in Paradise, I might say. She sat up straight, and
I could see that she was feeling different from me. The awfulest thing
was the silence; there wasn't a sound but the screaking of the saddles,
the measured tramplings, and the sneezing of the horses, afflicted by the
smothering dust-clouds which they kicked up. I wanted to sneeze myself,
but it seemed to me that I would rather go unsneezed, or suffer even a
bitterer torture, if there is one, than attract attention to myself.
I was not of a rank to make suggestions, or I would have suggested that
if we went faster we should get by sooner. It seemed to me that it was an
ill-judged time to be taking a walk. Just as we were drifting in that
suffocating stillness past a great cannon that stood just within a raised
portcullis, with nothing between me and it but the moat, a most uncommon
jackass in there split the world with his bray, and I fell out of the
saddle. Sir Bertrand grabbed me as I went, which was well, for if I had
gone to the ground in my armor I could not have gotten up again by
myself. The English warders on the battlements laughed a coarse laugh,
forgetting that every one must begin, and that there had been a time when
they themselves would have fared no better when shot by a jackass.
The English never uttered a challenge nor fired a shot. It was said
afterward that when their men saw the Maid riding at the front and saw
how lovely she was, their eager courage cooled down in many cases and
vanished in the rest, they feeling certain that the creature was not
mortal, but the very child of Satan, and so the officers were prudent and
did not try to make them fight. It was said also that some of the
officers were affected by the same superstitious fears. Well, in any
case, they never offered to molest us, and we poked by all the grisly
fortresses in peace. During the march I caught up on my devotions, which
were in arrears; so it was not all loss and no profit for me after all.
It was on this march that the histories say Dunois told Joan that the
English were expecting reinforcements under the command of Sir John
Fastolfe, and that she turned upon him and said:
"Bastard, Bastard, in God's name I warn you to let me know of his coming
as soon as you hear of it; for if he passes without my knowledge you
shall lose your head!"
It may be so; I don't deny it; but I didn't her it. If she really said it
I think she only meant she would take off his official head --degrade him
from his command. It was not like her to threaten a comrade's life. She
did have her doubts of her generals, and was entitled to them, for she
was all for storm and assault, and they were for holding still and tiring
the English out. Since they did not believe in her way and were
experienced old soldiers, it would be natural for them to prefer their
own and try to get around carrying hers out.
But I did hear something that the histories didn't mention and don't know
about. I heard Joan say that now that the garrisons on the other wide had
been weakened to strengthen those on our side, the most effective point
of operations had shifted to the south shore; so she meant to go over
there and storm the forts which held the bridge end, and that would open
up communication with our own dominions and raise the siege. The generals
began to balk, privately, right away, but they only baffled and delayed
her, and that for only four days.
All Orleans met the army at the gate and huzzaed it through the bannered
streets to its various quarters, but nobody had to rock it to sleep; it
slumped down dog-tired, for Dunois had rushed it without mercy, and for
the next twenty-four hours it would be quiet, all but the snoring.
Chapter 17 Sweet Fruit of Bitter Truth
WHEN WE got home, breakfast for us minor fry was waiting in our mess-room
and the family honored us by coming in to eat it with us. The nice old
treasurer, and in fact all three were flatteringly eager to hear about
our adventures. Nobody asked the Paladin to begin, but he did begin,
because now that his specially ordained and peculiar military rank set
him above everybody on the personal staff but old D'Aulon, who didn't eat
with us, he didn't care a farthing for the knights' nobility no mine, but
took precedence in the talk whenever it suited him, which was all the
time, because he was born that way. He said:
"God be thanked, we found the army in admirable condition I think I have
never seen a finer body of animals."
"Animals!" said Miss Catherine.
"I will explain to you what he means," said Noel. "He--"
"I will trouble you not to trouble yourself to explain anything for me,"
said the Paladin, loftily. "I have reason to think--"
"That is his way," said Noel; "always when he thinks he has reason to
think, he thinks he does think, but this is an error. He didn't see the
army. I noticed him, and he didn't see it. He was troubled by his old
complaint."
"What s his old complaint?" Catherine asked.
"Prudence," I said, seeing my chance to help.
But it was not a fortunate remark, for the Paladin said:
"It probably isn't your turn to criticize people's prudence--you who fall
out of the saddle when a donkey brays."
They all laughed, and I was ashamed of myself for my hasty smartness. I
said:
"It isn't quite fair for you to say I fell out on account of the donkey's
braying. It was emotion, just ordinary emotion."
"Very well, if you want to call it that, I am not objecting. What would
you call it, Sir Bertrand?"
"Well, it--well, whatever it was, it was excusable, I think. All of you
have learned how to behave in hot hand-to-hand engagements, and you don't
need to be ashamed of your record in that matter; but to walk along in
front of death, with one's hands idle, and no noise, no music, and
nothing going on, is a very trying situation. If I were you, De Conte, I
would name the emotion; it's nothing to be ashamed of."
It was as straight and sensible a speech as ever I heard, and I was
grateful for the opening it gave me; so I came out and said:
"It was fear--and thank you for the honest idea, too."
"It was the cleanest and best way out," said the old treasurer; "you've
done well, my lad."
That made me comfortable, and when Miss Catherine said, "It's what I
think, too," I was grateful to myself for getting into that scrape.
Sir Jean de Metz said:
"We were all in a body together when the donkey brayed, and it was
dismally still at the time. I don't see how any young campaigner could
escape some little touch of that emotion."
He looked about him with a pleasant expression of inquiry on his good
face, and as each pair of eyes in turn met his head they were in nodded a
confession. Even the Paladin delivered his nod. That surprised everybody,
and saved the Standard-Bearer's credit. It was clever of him; nobody
believed he could tell the truth that way without practice, or would tell
that particular sort of a truth either with or without practice. I
suppose he judged it would favorably impress the family. Then the old
treasurer said:
"Passing the forts in that trying way required the same sort of nerve
that a person must have when ghosts are about him in the dark, I should
think. What does the Standard-Bearer think?"
"Well, I don't quite know about that, sir. I've often thought I would
like to see a ghost if I--"
"Would you?" exclaimed the young lady. "We've got one! Would you try that
one? Will you?"
She was so eager and pretty that the Paladin said straight out that he
would; and then as none of the rest had bravery enough to expose the fear
that was in him, one volunteered after the other with a prompt mouth and
a sick heart till all were shipped for the voyage; then the girl clapped
her hands in glee, and the parents were gratified, too, saying that the
ghosts of their house had been a dread and a misery to them and their
forebears for generations, and nobody had ever been found yet who was
willing to confront them and find out what their trouble was, so that the
family could heal it and content the poor specters and beguile them to
tranquillity and peace.
Chapter 18 Joan's First Battle-Field
ABOUT NOON I was chatting with Madame Boucher; nothing was going on, all
was quiet, when Catherine Boucher suddenly entered in great excitement,
and said:
"Fly, sir, fly! The Maid was doing in her chair in my room, when she
sprang up and cried out, 'French blood is flowing!--my arms, give me my
arms!' Her giant was on guard at the door, and he brought D'Aulon, who
began to arm her, and I and the giant have been warning the staff.
Fly!--and stay by her; and if there really is a battle, keep her out of
it--don't let her risk herself--there is no need--if the men know she is
near and looking on, it is all that is necessary. Keep her out of the
fight--don't fail of this!"
I started on a run, saying, sarcastically--for I was always fond of
sarcasm, and it was said that I had a most neat gift that way:
"Oh, yes, nothing easier than that--I'll attend to it!"
At the furthest end of the house I met Joan, fully armed, hurrying toward
the door, and she said:
"Ah, French blood is being spilt, and you did not tell me."
"Indeed I did not know it," I said; "there are no sounds of war;
everything is quiet, your Excellency."
"You will hear war-sounds enough in a moment," she said, and was gone.
It was true. Before one could count five there broke upon the stillness
the swelling rush and tramp of an approaching multitude of men and
horses, with hoarse cries of command; and then out of the distance came
the muffled deep boom!--boom-boom!--boom! of cannon, and straightway that
rushing multitude was roaring by the house like a hurricane.
Our knights and all our staff came flying, armed, but with no horses
ready, and we burst out after Joan in a body, the Paladin in the lead
with the banner. The surging crowd was made up half of citizens and half
of soldiers, and had no recognized leader. When Joan was seen a huzza
went up, and she shouted:
"A horse--a horse!"
A dozen saddles were at her disposal in a moment. She mounted, a hundred
people shouting:
"Way, there--way for the MAID OF ORLEANS!" The first time that that
immortal name was ever uttered--and I, praise God, was there to hear it!
The mass divided itself like the waters of the Red Sea, and down this
lane Joan went skimming like a bird, crying, "Forward, French
hearts--follow me!" and we came winging in her wake on the rest of the
borrowed horses, the holy standard streaming above us, and the lane
closing together in our rear.
This was a different thing from the ghastly march past the dismal
bastilles. No, we felt fine, now, and all awhirl with enthusiasm. The
explanation of this sudden uprising was this. The city and the little
garrison, so long hopeless and afraid, had gone wild over Joan's coming,
and could no longer restrain their desire to get at the enemy; so,
without orders from anybody, a few hundred soldiers and citizens had
plunged out at the Burgundy gate on a sudden impulse and made a charge on
one of Lord Talbot's most formidable fortresses--St. Loup--and were
getting the worst of it. The news of this had swept through the city and
started this new crowd that we were with.
As we poured out at the gate we met a force bringing in the wounded from
the front. The sight moved Joan, and she said:
"Ah, French blood; it makes my hair rise to see it!"
We were soon on the field, soon in the midst of the turmoil. Joan was
seeing her first real battle, and so were we.
It was a battle in the open field; for the garrison of St. Loup had
sallied confidently out to meet the attack, being used to victories when
"witches" were not around. The sally had been reinforced by troops from
the "Paris" bastille, and when we approached the French were getting
whipped and were falling back. But when Joan came charging through the
disorder with her banner displayed, crying "Forward, men--follow me!"
there was a change; the French turned about and surged forward like a
solid wave of the sea, and swept the English before them, hacking and
slashing, and being hacked and slashed, in a way that was terrible to
see.
In the field the Dwarf had no assignment; that is to say, he was not
under orders to occupy any particular place, therefore he chose his place
for himself, and went ahead of Joan and made a road for her. It was
horrible to see the iron helmets fly into fragments under his dreadful
ax. He called it cracking nuts, and it looked like that. He made a good
road, and paved it well with flesh and iron. Joan and the rest of us
followed it so briskly that we outspeeded our forces and had the English
behind us as well as before. The knights commanded us to face outward
around Joan, which we did, and then there was work done that was fine to
see. One was obliged to respect the Paladin, now. Being right under
Joan's exalting and transforming eye, he forgot his native prudence, he
forgot his diffidence in the presence of danger, he forgot what fear was,
and he never laid about him in his imaginary battles in a more tremendous
way that he did in this real one; and wherever he struck there was an
enemy the less.
We were in that close place only a few minutes; then our forces to the
rear broke through with a great shout and joined us, and then the English
fought a retreating fight, but in a fine and gallant way, and we drove
them to their fortress foot by foot, they facing us all the time, and
their reserves on the walls raining showers of arrows, cross-bow bolts,
and stone cannon-balls upon us.
The bulk of the enemy got safely within the works and left us outside
with piles of French and English dead and wounded for company--a
sickening sight, an awful sight to us youngsters, for our little ambush
fights in February had been in the night, and the blood and the
mutilations and the dead faces were mercifully dim, whereas we saw these
things now for the first time in all their naked ghastliness.
Now arrived Dunois from the city, and plunged through the battle on his
foam-flecked horse and galloped up to Joan, saluting, and uttering
handsome compliments as he came. He waved his hand toward the distant
walls of the city, where a multitude of flags were flaunting gaily in the
wind, and said the populace were up there observing her fortunate
performance and rejoicing over it, and added that she and the forces
would have a great reception now.
"Now? Hardly now, Bastard. Not yet!"
"Why not yet? Is there more to be done?"
"More, Bastard? We have but begun! We will take this fortress."
"Ah, you can't be serious! We can't take this place; let me urge you not
to make the attempt; it is too desperate. Let me order the forces back."
Joan's heart was overflowing with the joys and enthusiasms of war, and it
made her impatient to hear such talk. She cried out:
"Bastard, Bastard, will ye play always with these English? Now verily I
tell you we will not budge until this place is ours. We will carry it by
storm. Sound the charge!"
"Ah, my General--"
"Waste no more time, man--let the bugles sound the assault!" and we saw
that strange deep light in her eye which we named the battle-light, and
learned to know so well in later fields.
The martial notes pealed out, the troops answered with a yell, and down
they came against that formidable work, whose outlines were lost in its
own cannon-smoke, and whose sides were spouting flame and thunder.
We suffered repulse after repulse, but Joan was here and there and
everywhere encouraging the men, and she kept them to their work. During
three hours the tide ebbed and flowed, flowed and ebbed; but at last La
Hire, who was now come, made a final and resistless charge, and the
bastille St. Loup was ours. We gutted it, taking all its stores and
artillery, and then destroyed it.
When all our host was shouting itself hoarse with rejoicings, and there
went up a cry for the General, for they wanted to praise her and glorify
her and do her homage for her victory, we had trouble to find her; and
when we did find her, she was off by herself, sitting among a ruck of
corpses, with her face in her hands, crying--for she was a young girl,
you know, and her hero heart was a young girl's heart too, with the pity
and the tenderness that are natural to it. She was thinking of the
mothers of those dead friends and enemies.
Among the prisoners were a number of priests, and Joan took these under
her protection and saved their lives. It was urged that they were most
probably combatants in disguise, but she said:
"As to that, how can any tell? They wear the livery of God, and if even
one of these wears it rightfully, surely it were better that all the
guilty should escape than that we have upon our hands the blood of that
innocent man. I will lodge them where I lodge, and feed them, and sent
them away in safety."
We marched back to the city with our crop of cannon and prisoners on view
and our banners displayed. Here was the first substantial bit of war-work
the imprisoned people had seen in the seven months that the siege had
endured, the first chance they had had to rejoice over a French exploit.
You may guess that they made good use of it. They and the bells went mad.
Joan was their darling now, and the press of people struggling and
shouldering each other to get a glimpse of her was so great that we could
hardly push our way through the streets at all. Her new name had gone all
about, and was on everybody's lips. The Holy Maid of Vaucouleurs was a
forgotten title; the city had claimed her for its own, and she was the
MAID OF ORLEANS now. It is a happiness to me to remember that I heard
that name the first time it was ever uttered. Between that first
utterance and the last time it will be uttered on this earth--ah, think
how many moldering ages will lie in that gap!
The Boucher family welcomed her back as if she had been a child of the
house, and saved from death against all hope or probability. They chided
her for going into the battle and exposing herself to danger during all
those hours. They could not realize that she had meant to carry her
warriorship so far, and asked her if it had really been her purpose to go
right into the turmoil of the fight, or hadn't she got swept into it by
accident and the rush of the troops? They begged her to be more careful
another time. It was good advice, maybe, but it fell upon pretty
unfruitful soil.
Chapter 19 We Burst In Upon Ghosts
BEING WORN out with the long fight, we all slept the rest of the
afternoon away and two or three hours into the night. Then we got up
refreshed, and had supper. As for me, I could have been willing to let
the matter of the ghost drop; and the others were of a like mind, no
doubt, for they talked diligently of the battle and said nothing of that
other thing. And indeed it was fine and stirring to hear the Paladin
rehearse his deeds and see him pile his dead, fifteen here, eighteen
there, and thirty-five yonder; but this only postponed the trouble; it
could not do more. He could not go on forever; when he had carried the
bastille by assault and eaten up the garrison there was nothing for it
but to stop, unless Catherine Boucher would give him a new start and have
it all done over again--as we hoped she would, this time--but she was
otherwise minded. As soon as there was a good opening and a fair chance,
she brought up her unwelcome subject, and we faced it the best we could.
We followed her and her parents to the haunted room at eleven o'clock,
with candles, and also with torches to place in the sockets on the walls.
It was a big house, with very thick walls, and this room was in a remote
part of it which had been left unoccupied for nobody knew how many years,
because of its evil repute.
This was a large room, like a salon, and had a big table in it of
enduring oak and well preserved; but the chair were worm-eaten and the
tapestry on the walls was rotten and discolored by age. The dusty cobwebs
under the ceiling had the look of not having had any business for a
century.
Catherine said:
"Tradition says that these ghosts have never been seen--they have merely
been heard. It is plain that this room was once larger than it is now,
and that the wall at this end was built in some bygone time to make and
fence off a narrow room there. There is no communication anywhere with
that narrow room, and if it exists--and of that there is no reasonable
doubt--it has no light and no air, but is an absolute dungeon. Wait where
you are, and take note of what happens."
That was all. Then she and her parents left us. When their footfalls had
died out in the distance down the empty stone corridors an uncanny
silence and solemnity ensued which was dismaler to me than the mute march
past the bastilles. We sat looking vacantly at each other, and it was
easy to see that no one there was comfortable. The longer we sat so, the
more deadly still that stillness got to be; and when the wind began to
moan around the house presently, it made me sick and miserable, and I
wished I had been brave enough to be a coward this time, for indeed it is
no proper shame to be afraid of ghosts, seeing how helpless the living
are in their hands. And then these ghosts were invisible, which made the
matter the worse, as it seemed to me. They might be in the room with us
at that moment--we could not know. I felt airy touches on my shoulders
and my hair, and I shrank from them and cringed, and was not ashamed to
show this fear, for I saw the others doing the like, and knew that they
were feeling those faint contacts too. As this went on--oh, eternities it
seemed, the time dragged so drearily--all those faces became as wax, and
I seemed sitting with a congress of the dead.
At last, faint and far and weird and slow, came a
"boom!--boom!--boom!"--a distant bell tolling midnight. When the last
stroke died, that depressing stillness followed again, and as before I
was staring at those waxen faces and feeling those airy touches on my
hair and my shoulders once more.
One minute--two minutes--three minutes of this, then we heard a long deep
groan, and everybody sprang up and stood, with his legs quaking. It came
from that little dungeon. There was a pause, then we herd muffled
sobbings, mixed with pitiful ejaculations. Then there was a second voice,
low and not distinct, and the one seemed trying to comfort the other; and
so the two voices went on, with moanings, and soft sobbings, and, ah, the
tones were so full of compassion and sorry and despair! Indeed, it made
one's heart sore to hear it.
But those sounds were so real and so human and so moving that the idea of
ghosts passed straight out of our minds, and Sir Jean de Metz spoke out
and said:
"Come! we will smash that wall and set those poor captives free. Here,
with your ax!"
The Dwarf jumped forward, swinging his great ax with both hands, and
others sprang for torches and brought them.
Bang!--whang!--slam!--smash went the ancient bricks, and there was a hole
an ox could pass through. We plunged within and held up the torches.
Nothing there but vacancy! On the floor lay a rusty sword and a rotten
fan.
Now you know all that I know. Take the pathetic relics, and weave about
them the romance of the dungeon's long-vanished inmates as best you can.
Chapter 20 Joan Makes Cowards Brave Victors
THE NEXT day Joan wanted to go against the enemy again, but it was the
feast of the Ascension, and the holy council of bandit generals were too
pious to be willing to profane it with bloodshed. But privately they
profaned it with plottings, a sort of industry just in their line. They
decided to do the only thing proper to do now in the new circumstances of
the case--feign an attack on the most important bastille on the Orleans
side, and then, if the English weakened the far more important fortresses
on the other side of the river to come to its help, cross in force and
capture those works. This would give them the bridge and free
communication with the Sologne, which was French territory. They decided
to keep this latter part of the program secret from Joan.
Joan intruded and took them by surprise. She asked them what they were
about and what they had resolved upon. They said they had resolved to
attack the most important of the English bastilles on the Orleans side
next morning--and there the spokesman stopped. Joan said:
"Well, go on."
"There is nothing more. That is all."
"Am I to believe this? That is to say, am I to believe that you have lost
your wits?" She turned to Dunois, and said, "Bastard, you have sense,
answer me this: if this attack is made and the bastille taken, how much
better off would we be than we are now?"
The Bastard hesitated, and then began some rambling talk not quite
germane to the question. Joan interrupted him and said:
"That will not do, good Bastard, you have answered. Since the Bastard is
not able to mention any advantage to be gained by taking that bastille
and stopping there, it is not likely that any of you could better the
matter. You waste much time here in inventing plans that lead to nothing,
and making delays that are a damage. Are you concealing something from
me? Bastard, this council has a general plan, I take it; without going
into details, what is it?"
"It is the same it was in the beginning, seven months ago--to get
provisions for a long siege, then sit down and tire the English out."
"In the name of God! As if seven months was not enough, you want to
provide for a year of it. Now ye shall drop these pusillanimous
dreams--the English shall go in three days!"
Several exclaimed:
"Ah, General, General, be prudent!"
"Be prudent and starve? Do ye call that war? I tell you this, if you do
not already know it: The new circumstances have changed the face of
matters. The true point of attack has shifted; it is on the other side of
the river now. One must take the fortifications that command the bridge.
The English know that if we are not fools and cowards we will try to do
that. They are grateful for your piety in wasting this day. They will
reinforce the bridge forts from this side to-night, knowing what ought to
happen to-morrow. You have but lost a day and made our task harder, for
we will cross and take the bridge forts. Bastard, tell me the truth--does
not this council know that there is no other course for us than the one I
am speaking of?"
Dunois conceded that the council did know it to be the most desirable,
but considered it impracticable; and he excused the council as well as he
could by saying that inasmuch as nothing was really and rationally to be
hoped for but a long continuance of the siege and wearying out of the
English, they were naturally a little afraid of Joan's impetuous notions.
He said:
"You see, we are sure that the waiting game is the best, whereas you
would carry everything by storm."
"That I would!--and moreover that I will! You have my orders--here and
now. We will move upon the forts of the south bank to-morrow at dawn."
"And carry them by storm?"
"Yes, carry them by storm!"
La Hire came clanking in, and heard the last remark. He cried out:
"By my baton, that is the music I love to hear! Yes, that is the right
time and the beautiful words, my General--we will carry them by storm!"
He saluted in his large way and came up and shook Joan by the hand.
Some member of the council was heard to say:
"It follows, then, that we must begin with the bastille St. John, and
that will give the English time to--"
Joan turned and said:
"Give yourselves no uneasiness about the bastille St. John. The English
will know enough to retire from it and fall back on the bridge bastilles
when they see us coming." She added, with a touch of sarcasm, "Even a
war-council would know enough to do that itself."
Then she took her leave. La Hire made this general remark to the council:
"She is a child, and that is all ye seem to see. Keep to that
superstition if you must, but you perceive that this child understands
this complex game of war as well as any of you; and if you want my
opinion without the trouble of asking for it, here you have it without
ruffles or embroidery--by God, I think she can teach the best of you how
to play it!"
Joan had spoken truly; the sagacious English saw that the policy of the
French had undergone a revolution; that the policy of paltering and
dawdling was ended; that in place of taking blows, blows were ready to be
struck now; therefore they made ready for the new state of things by
transferring heavy reinforcements to the bastilles of the south bank from
those of the north.
The city learned the great news that once more in French history, after
all these humiliating years, France was going to take the offensive; that
France, so used to retreating, was going to advance; that France, so long
accustomed to skulking, was going to face about and strike. The joy of
the people passed all bounds. The city walls were black with them to see
the army march out in the morning in that strange new position--its
front, not its tail, toward an English camp. You shall imagine for
yourselves what the excitement was like and how it expressed itself, when
Joan rode out at the head of the host with her banner floating above her.
We crossed the five in strong force, and a tedious long job it was, for
the boats were small and not numerous. Our landing on the island of St.
Aignan was not disputed. We threw a bridge of a few boats across the
narrow channel thence to the south shore and took up our march in good
order and unmolested; for although there was a fortress there--St.
John--the English vacated and destroyed it and fell back on the bridge
forts below as soon as our first boats were seen to leave the Orleans
shore; which was what Joan had said would happen, when she was disputing
with the council.
We moved down the shore and Joan planted her standard before the bastille
of the Augustins, the first of the formidable works that protected the
end of the bridge. The trumpets sounded the assault, and two charges
followed in handsome style; but we were too weak, as yet, for our main
body was still lagging behind. Before we could gather for a third assault
the garrison of St. Prive were seen coming up to reinforce the big
bastille. They came on a run, and the Augustins sallied out, and both
forces came against us with a rush, and sent our small army flying in a
panic, and followed us, slashing and slaying, and shouting jeers and
insults at us.
Joan was doing her best to rally the men, but their wits were gone, their
hearts were dominated for the moment by the old-time dread of the
English. Joan's temper flamed up, and she halted and commanded the
trumpets to sound the advance. Then she wheeled about and cried out:
"If there is but a dozen of you that are not cowards, it is
enough--follow me!"
Away she went, and after her a few dozen who had heard her words and been
inspired by them. The pursuing force was astonished to see her sweeping
down upon them with this handful of men, and it was their turn now to
experience a grisly fright--surely this is a witch, this is a child of
Satan! That was their thought--and without stopping to analyze the matter
they turned and fled in a panic.
Our flying squadrons heard the bugle and turned to look; and when they
saw the Maid's banner speeding in the other direction and the enemy
scrambling ahead of it in disorder, their courage returned and they came
scouring after us.
La Hire heard it and hurried his force forward and caught up with us just
as we were planting our banner again before the ramparts of the
Augustins. We were strong enough now. We had a long and tough piece of
work before us, but we carried it through before night, Joan keeping us
hard at it, and she and La Hire saying we were able to take that big
bastille, and must. The English fought like--well, they fought like the
English; when that is said, there is no more to say. We made assault
after assault, through the smoke and flame and the deafening
cannon-blasts, and at last as the sun was sinking we carried the place
with a rush, and planted our standard on its walls.
The Augustins was ours. The Tourelles must be ours, too, if we would free
the bridge and raise the siege. We had achieved one great undertaking,
Joan was determined to accomplish the other. We must lie on our arms
where we were, hold fast to what we had got, and be ready for business in
the morning. So Joan was not minded to let the men be demoralized by
pillage and riot and carousings; she had the Augustins burned, with all
its stores in it, excepting the artillery and ammunition.
Everybody was tired out with this long day's hard work, and of course
this was the case with Joan; still, she wanted to stay with the army
before the Tourelles, to be ready for the assault in the morning. The
chiefs argued with her, and at last persuaded her to go home and prepare
for the great work by taking proper rest, and also by having a leech look
to a wound which she had received in her foot. So we crossed with them
and went home.
Just as usual, we found the town in a fury of joy, all the bells
clanging, everybody shouting, and several people drunk. We never went out
or came in without furnishing good and sufficient reasons for one of
these pleasant tempests, and so the tempest was always on hand. There had
been a blank absence of reasons for this sort of upheavals for the past
seven months, therefore the people too to the upheavals with all the more
relish on that account.
Chapter 21 She Gently Reproves Her Dear Friend
TO GET away from the usual crowd of visitors and have a rest, Joan went
with Catherine straight to the apartment which the two occupied together,
and there they took their supper and there the wound was dressed. But
then, instead of going to bed, Joan, weary as she was, sent the Dwarf for
me, in spite of Catherine's protests and persuasions. She said she had
something on her mind, and must send a courier to Domremy with a letter
for our old Pere Fronte to read to her mother. I came, and she began to
dictate. After some loving words and greetings to her mother and family,
came this:
"But the thing which moves me to write now, is to say that when you
presently hear that I am wounded, you shall give yourself no concern
about it, and refuse faith to any that shall try to make you believe it
is serious."
She was going on, when Catherine spoke up and said:
"Ah, but it will fright her so to read these words. Strike them out,
Joan, strike them out, and wait only one day--two days at most--then
write and say your foot was wounded but is well again--for it surely be
well then, or very near it. Don't distress her, Joan; do as I say."
A laugh like the laugh of the old days, the impulsive free laugh of an
untroubled spirit, a laugh like a chime of bells, was Joan's answer; then
she said:
"My foot? Why should I write about such a scratch as that? I was not
thinking of it, dear heart."
"Child, have you another wound and a worse, and have not spoken of it?
What have you been dreaming about, that you--"
She had jumped up, full of vague fears, to have the leech called back at
once, but Joan laid her hand upon her arm and made her sit down again,
saying:
"There, now, be tranquil, there is no other wound, as yet; I am writing
about one which I shall get when we storm that bastille tomorrow."
Catherine had the look of one who is trying to understand a puzzling
proposition but cannot quite do it. She said, in a distraught fashion:
"A wound which you are going to get? But--but why grieve your mother when
it--when it may not happen?"
"May not? Why, it will."
The puzzle was a puzzle still. Catherine said in that same abstracted way
as before:
"Will. It is a strong word. I cannot seem to--my mind is not able to take
hold of this. Oh, Joan, such a presentiment is a dreadful thing--it takes
one's peace and courage all away. Cast it from you!--drive it out! It
will make your whole night miserable, and to no good; for we will hope--"
"But it isn't a presentiment--it is a fact. And it will not make me
miserable. It is uncertainties that do that, but this is not an
uncertainty."
"Joan, do you know it is going to happen?"
"Yes, I know it. My Voices told me."
"Ah," said Catherine, resignedly, "if they told you-- But are you sure it
was they?--quite sure?"
"Yes, quite. It will happen--there is no doubt."
"It is dreadful! Since when have you know it?"
"Since--I think it is several weeks." Joan turned to me. "Louis, you will
remember. How long is it?"
"Your Excellency spoke of it first to the King, in Chinon," I answered;
"that was as much as seven weeks ago. You spoke of it again the 20th of
April, and also the 22d, two weeks ago, as I see by my record here."
These marvels disturbed Catherine profoundly, but I had long ceased to be
surprised at them. One can get used to anything in this world. Catherine
said:
"And it is to happen to-morrow?--always to-morrow? Is it the same date
always? There has been no mistake, and no confusion?"
"No," Joan said, "the 7th of May is the date--there is no other."
"Then you shall not go a step out of this house till that awful day is
gone by! You will not dream of it, Joan, will you?--promise that you will
stay with us."
But Joan was not persuaded. She said:
"It would not help the matter, dear good friend. The wound is to come,
and come to-morrow. If I do not seek it, it will seek me. My duty calls
me to that place to-morrow; I should have to go if my death were waiting
for me there; shall I stay away for only a wound? Oh, no, we must try to
do better than that."
"Then you are determined to go?"
"Of a certainty, yes. There is only one thing that I can do for
France--hearten her soldiers for battle and victory." She thought a
moment, then added, "However, one should not be unreasonable, and I would
do much to please you, who are so good to me. Do you love France?"
I wondered what she might be contriving now, but I saw no clue. Catherine
said, reproachfully:
"Ah, what have I done to deserve this question?"
"Then you do love France. I had not doubted it, dear. Do not be hurt, but
answer me--have you ever told a lie?"
"In my life I have not wilfully told a lie--fibs, but no lies."
"That is sufficient. You love France and do not tell lies; therefore I
will trust you. I will go or I will stay, as you shall decide."
"Oh, I thank you from my heart, Joan! How good and dear it is of you to
do this for me! Oh, you shall stay, and not go!"
In her delight she flung her arms about Joan's neck and squandered
endearments upon her the least of which would have made me rich, but, as
it was, they only made me realize how poor I was--how miserably poor in
what I would most have prized in this world. Joan said:
"Then you will send word to my headquarters that I am not going?"
"Oh, gladly. Leave that to me."
"It is good of you. And how will you word it?--for it must have proper
official form. Shall I word it for you?"
"Oh, do--for you know about these solemn procedures and stately
proprieties, and I have had no experience."
"Then word it like this: 'The chief of staff is commanded to make known
to the King's forces in garrison and in the field, that the
General-in-Chief of the Armies of France will not face the English on the
morrow, she being afraid she may get hurt. Signed, JOAN OF ARC, by the
hand of CATHERINE BOUCHER, who loves France.'"
There was a pause--a silence of the sort that tortures one into stealing
a glance to see how the situation looks, and I did that. There was a
loving smile on Joan's face, but the color was mounting in crimson waves
into Catherine's, and her lips were quivering and the tears gathering;
then she said:
"Oh, I am so ashamed of myself!--and you are so noble and brave and wise,
and I am so paltry--so paltry and such a fool!" and she broke down and
began to cry, and I did so want to take her in my arms and comfort her,
but Joan did it, and of course I said nothing. Joan did it well, and most
sweetly and tenderly, but I could have done it as well, though I knew it
would be foolish and out of place to suggest such a thing, and might make
an awkwardness, too, and be embarrassing to us all, so I did not offer,
and I hope I did right and for the best, though I could not know, and was
many times tortured with doubts afterward as having perhaps let a chance
pass which might have changed all my life and made it happier and more
beautiful than, alas, it turned out to be. For this reason I grieve yet,
when I think of that scene, and do not like to call it up out of the
deeps of my memory because of the pangs it brings.
Well, well, a good and wholesome thing is a little harmless fun in this
world; it tones a body up and keeps him human and prevents him from
souring. To set that little trap for Catherine was as good and effective
a way as any to show her what a grotesque thing she was asking of Joan.
It was a funny idea now, wasn't it, when you look at it all around? Even
Catherine dried up her tears and laughed when she thought of the English
getting hold of the French Commander-in-Chief's reason for staying out of
a battle. She granted that they could have a good time over a thing like
that.
We got to work on the letter again, and of course did not have to strike
out the passage about the wound. Joan was in fine spirits; but when she
got to sending messages to this, that, and the other playmate and friend,
it brought our village and the Fairy Tree and the flowery plain and the
browsing sheep and all the peaceful beauty of our old humble home-place
back, and the familiar names began to tremble on her lips; and when she
got to Haumette and Little Mengette it was no use, her voice broke and
she couldn't go on. She waited a moment, then said:
"Give them my love--my warm love--my deep love--oh, out of my heart of
hearts! I shall never see our home any more."
Now came Pasquerel, Joan's confessor, and introduced a gallant knight,
the Sire de Rais, who had been sent with a message. He said he was
instructed to say that the council had decided that enough had been done
for the present; that it would be safest and best to be content with what
God had already done; that the city was now well victualed and able to
stand a long siege; that the wise course must necessarily be to withdraw
the troops from the other side of the river and resume the
defensive--therefore they had decided accordingly.
"The incurable cowards!" exclaimed Joan. "So it was to get me away from
my men that they pretended so much solicitude about my fatigue. Take this
message back, not to the council--I have no speeches for those disguised
ladies' maids--but to the Bastard and La Hire, who are men. Tell them the
army is to remain where it is, and I hold them responsible if this
command miscarries. And say the offensive will be resumed in the morning.
You may go, good sir."
Then she said to her priest:
"Rise early, and be by me all the day. There will be much work on my
hands, and I shall be hurt between my neck and my shoulder."
Chapter 22 The Fate of France Decided
WE WERE up at dawn, and after mass we started. In the hall we met the
master of the house, who was grieved, good man, to see Joan going
breakfastless to such a day's work, and begged her to wait and eat, but
she couldn't afford the time--that is to say, she couldn't afford the
patience, she being in such a blaze of anxiety to get at that last
remaining bastille which stood between her and the completion of the
first great step in the rescue and redemption of France. Boucher put in
another plea:
"But think--we poor beleaguered citizens who have hardly known the flavor
of fish for these many months, have spoil of that sort again, and we owe
it to you. There's a noble shad for breakfast; wait--be persuaded."
Joan said:
"Oh, there's going to be fish in plenty; when this day's work is done the
whole river-front will be yours to do as you please with."
"Ah, your Excellency will do well, that I know; but we don't require
quite that much, even of you; you shall have a month for it in place of a
day. Now be beguiled--wait and eat. There's a saying that he that would
cross a river twice in the same day in a boat, will do well to eat fish
for luck, lest he have an accident."
"That doesn't fit my case, for to-day I cross but once in a boat."
"Oh, don't say that. Aren't you coming back to us?"
"Yes, but not in a boat."
"How, then?"
"By the bridge."
"Listen to that--by the bridge! Now stop this jesting, dear General, and
do as I would have done you. It's a noble fish."
"Be good then, and save me some for supper; and I will bring one of those
Englishmen with me and he shall have his share."
"Ah, well, have your way if you must. But he that fasts must attempt but
little and stop early. When shall you be back?"
"When we've raised the siege of Orleans. FORWARD!"
We were off. The streets were full of citizens and of groups and squads
of soldiers, but the spectacle was melancholy. There was not a smile
anywhere, but only universal gloom. It was as if some vast calamity had
smitten all hope and cheer dead. We were not used to this, and were
astonished. But when they saw the Maid, there was an immediate stir, and
the eager question flew from mouth to mouth.
"Where is she going? Whither is she bound?"
Joan heard it, and called out:
"Whither would ye suppose? I am going to take the Tourelles."
It would not be possible for any to describe how those few words turned
that mourning into joy--into exaltation--into frenzy; and how a storm of
huzzas burst out and swept down the streets in every direction and woke
those corpse-like multitudes to vivid life and action and turmoil in a
moment. The soldiers broke from the crowd and came flocking to our
standard, and many of the citizens ran and got pikes and halberds and
joined us. As we moved on, our numbers increased steadily, and the
hurrahing continued--yes, we moved through a solid cloud of noise, as you
may say, and all the windows on both sides contributed to it, for they
were filled with excited people.
You see, the council had closed the Burgundy gate and placed a strong
force there, under that stout soldier Raoul de Gaucourt, Bailly of
Orleans, with orders to prevent Joan from getting out and resuming the
attack on the Tourelles, and this shameful thing had plunged the city
into sorrow and despair. But that feeling was gone now. They believed the
Maid was a match for the council, and they were right.
When we reached the gate, Joan told Gaucourt to open it and let her pass.
He said it would be impossible to do this, for his orders were from the
council and were strict. Joan said:
"There is no authority above mine but the King's. If you have an order
from the King, produce it."
"I cannot claim to have an order from him, General."
"Then make way, or take the consequences!"
He began to argue the case, for he was like the rest of the tribe, always
ready to fight with words, not acts; but in the midst of his gabble Joan
interrupted with the terse order:
"Charge!"
We came with a rush, and brief work we made of that small job. It was
good to see the Bailly's surprise. He was not used to this unsentimental
promptness. He said afterward that he was cut off in the midst of what he
was saying--in the midst of an argument by which he could have proved
that he could not let Joan pass--an argument which Joan could not have
answered.
"Still, it appears she did answer it," said the person he was talking to.
We swung through the gate in great style, with a vast accession of noise,
the most of which was laughter, and soon our van was over the river and
moving down against the Tourelles.
First we must take a supporting work called a boulevard, and which was
otherwise nameless, before we could assault the great bastille. Its rear
communicated with the bastille by a drawbridge, under which ran a swift
and deep strip of the Loire. The boulevard was strong, and Dunois doubted
our ability to take it, but Joan had no such doubt. She pounded it with
artillery all the forenoon, then about noon she ordered an assault and
led it herself. We poured into the fosse through the smoke and a tempest
of missiles, and Joan, shouting encouragements to her men, started to
climb a scaling-ladder, when that misfortune happened which we knew was
to happen--the iron bolt from an arbaquest struck between her neck and
her shoulder, and tore its way down through her armor. When she felt the
sharp pain and saw her blood gushing over her breast, she was frightened,
poor girl, and as she sank to the ground she began to cry bitterly.
The English sent up a glad shout and came surging down in strong force to
take her, and then for a few minutes the might of both adversaries was
concentrated upon that spot. Over her and above her, English and French
fought with desperation--for she stood for France, indeed she was France
to both sides--whichever won her won France, and could keep it forever.
Right there in that small spot, and in ten minutes by the clock, the fate
of France, for all time, was to be decided, and was decided.
If the English had captured Joan then, Charles VII. would have flown the
country, the Treaty of Troyes would have held good, and France, already
English property, would have become, without further dispute, an English
province, to so remain until Judgment Day. A nationality and a kingdom
were at stake there, and no more time to decide it in than it takes to
hard-boil an egg. It was the most momentous ten minutes that the clock
has ever ticked in France, or ever will. Whenever you read in histories
about hours or days or weeks in which the fate of one or another nation
hung in the balance, do not you fail to remember, nor your French hearts
to beat the quicker for the remembrance, the ten minutes that France,
called otherwise Joan of Arc, lay bleeding in the fosse that day, with
two nations struggling over her for her possession.
And you will not forget the Dwarf. For he stood over her, and did the
work of any six of the others. He swung his ax with both hands; whenever
it came down, he said those two words, "For France!" and a splintered
helmet flew like eggshells, and the skull that carried it had learned its
manners and would offend the French no more. He piled a bulwark of
iron-clad dead in front of him and fought from behind it; and at last
when the victory was ours we closed about him, shielding him, and he ran
up a ladder with Joan as easily as another man would carry a child, and
bore her out of the battle, a great crowd following and anxious, for she
was drenched with blood to her feet, half of it her own and the other
half English, for bodies had fallen across her as she lay and had poured
their red life-streams over her. One couldn't see the white armor now,
with that awful dressing over it.
The iron bolt was still in the wound--some say it projected out behind
the shoulder. It may be--I did not wish to see, and did not try to. It
was pulled out, and the pain made Joan cry again, poor thing. Some say
she pulled it out herself because others refused, saying they could not
bear to hurt her. As to this I do not know; I only know it was pulled
out, and that the wound was treated with oil and properly dressed.
Joan lay on the grass, weak and suffering, hour after hour, but still
insisting that the fight go on. Which it did, but not to much purpose,
for it was only under her eye that men were heroes and not afraid. They
were like the Paladin; I think he was afraid of his shadow--I mean in the
afternoon, when it was very big and long; but when he was under Joan's
eye and the inspiration of her great spirit, what was he afraid of?
Nothing in this world--and that is just the truth.
Toward night Dunois gave it up. Joan heard the bugles.
"What!" she cried. "Sounding the retreat!"
Her wound was forgotten in a moment. She countermanded the order, and
sent another, to the officer in command of a battery, to stand ready to
fire five shots in quick succession. This was a signal to the force on
the Orleans side of the river under La Hire, who was not, as some of the
histories say, with us. It was to be given whenever Joan should feel sure
the boulevard was about to fall into her hands--then that force must make
a counter-attack on the Tourelles by way of the bridge.
Joan mounted her horse now, with her staff about her, and when our people
saw us coming they raised a great shout, and were at once eager for
another assault on the boulevard. Joan rode straight to the fosse where
she had received her wound, and standing there in the rain of bolts and
arrows, she ordered the Paladin to let her long standard blow free, and
to note when its fringes should touch the fortress. Presently he said:
"It touches."
"Now, then," said Joan to the waiting battalions, "the place is
yours--enter in! Bugles, sound the assault! Now, then--all together--go!"
And go it was. You never saw anything like it. We swarmed up the ladders
and over the battlements like a wave--and the place was our property.
Why, one might live a thousand years and never see so gorgeous a thing as
that again. There, hand to hand, we fought like wild beasts, for there
was no give-up to those English--there was no way to convince one of
those people but to kill him, and even then he doubted. At least so it
was thought, in those days, and maintained by many.
We were busy and never heard the five cannon-shots fired, but they were
fired a moment after Joan had ordered the assault; and so, while we were
hammering and being hammered in the smaller fortress, the reserve on the
Orleans side poured across the bridge and attacked the Tourelles from
that side. A fire-boat was brought down and moored under the drawbridge
which connected the Tourelles with our boulevard; wherefore, when at last
we drove our English ahead of us and they tried to cross that drawbridge
and join their friends in the Tourelles, the burning timbers gave way
under them and emptied them in a mass into the river in their heavy
armor--and a pitiful sight it was to see brave men die such a death as
that.
"Ah, God pity them!" said Joan, and wept to see that sorrowful spectacle.
She said those gentle words and wept those compassionate tears although
one of those perishing men had grossly insulted her with a coarse name
three days before, when she had sent him a message asking him to
surrender. That was their leader, Sir Williams Glasdale, a most valorous
knight. He was clothed all in steel; so he plunged under water like a
lance, and of course came up no more.
We soon patched a sort of bridge together and threw ourselves against the
last stronghold of the English power that barred Orleans from friends and
supplies. Before the sun was quite down, Joan's forever memorable day's
work was finished, her banner floated from the fortress of the Tourelles,
her promise was fulfilled, she had raised the siege of Orleans!
The seven months' beleaguerment was ended, the thing which the first
generals of France had called impossible was accomplished; in spite of
all that the King's ministers and war-councils could do to prevent it,
this little country-maid at seventeen had carried her immortal task
through, and had done it in four days!
Good news travels fast, sometimes, as well as bad. By the time we were
ready to start homeward by the bridge the whole city of Orleans was one
red flame of bonfires, and the heavens blushed with satisfaction to see
it; and the booming and bellowing of cannon and the banging of bells
surpassed by great odds anything that even Orleans had attempted before
in the way of noise.
When we arrived--well, there is no describing that. Why, those acres of
people that we plowed through shed tears enough to raise the river; there
was not a face in the glare of those fires that hadn't tears streaming
down it; and if Joan's feet had not been protected by iron they would
have kissed them off of her. "Welcome! welcome to the Maid of Orleans!"
That was the cry; I heard it a hundred thousand times. "Welcome to our
Maid!" some of them worded it.
No other girl in all history has ever reached such a summit of glory as
Joan of Arc reached that day. And do you think it turned her head, and
that she sat up to enjoy that delicious music of homage and applause? No;
another girl would have done that, but not this one. That was the
greatest heart and the simplest that ever beat. She went straight to bed
and to sleep, like any tired child; and when the people found she was
wounded and would rest, they shut off all passage and traffic in that
region and stood guard themselves the whole night through, to see that he
slumbers were not disturbed. They said, "She has given us peace, she
shall have peace herself."
All knew that that region would be empty of English next day, and all
said that neither the present citizens nor their posterity would ever
cease to hold that day sacred to the memory of Joan of Arc. That word has
been true for more than sixty years; it will continue so always. Orleans
will never forget the 8th of May, nor ever fail to celebrate it. It is
Joan of Arc's day--and holy. [1]
[1] It is still celebrated every year with civic and military pomps and
solemnities. -- TRANSLATOR.
Chapter 23 Joan Inspires the Tawdry King
IN THE earliest dawn of morning, Talbot and his English forces evacuated
their bastilles and marched away, not stopping to burn, destroy, or carry
off anything, but leaving their fortresses just as they were,
provisioned, armed, and equipped for a long siege. It was difficult for
the people to believe that this great thing had really happened; that
they were actually free once more, and might go and come through any gate
they pleased, with none to molest or forbid; that the terrible Talbot,
that scourge of the French, that man whose mere name had been able to
annul the effectiveness of French armies, was gone, vanished,
retreating--driven away by a girl.
The city emptied itself. Out of every gate the crowds poured. They
swarmed about the English bastilles like an invasion of ants, but noisier
than those creatures, and carried off the artillery and stores, then
turned all those dozen fortresses into monster bonfires, imitation
volcanoes whose lofty columns of thick smoke seemed supporting the arch
of the sky.
The delight of the children took another form. To some of the younger
ones seven months was a sort of lifetime. They had forgotten what grass
was like, and the velvety green meadows seemed paradise to their
surprised and happy eyes after the long habit of seeing nothing but dirty
lanes and streets. It was a wonder to them--those spacious reaches of
open country to run and dance and tumble and frolic in, after their dull
and joyless captivity; so they scampered far and wide over the fair
regions on both sides of the river, and came back at eventide weary, but
laden with flowers and flushed with new health drawn from the fresh
country air and the vigorous exercise.
After the burnings, the grown folk followed Joan from church to church
and put in the day in thanksgivings for the city's deliverance, and at
night they feted her and her generals and illuminated the town, and high
and low gave themselves up to festivities and rejoicings. By the time the
populace were fairly in bed, toward dawn, we were in the saddle and away
toward Tours to report to the King.
That was a march which would have turned any one's head but Joan's. We
moved between emotional ranks of grateful country-people all the way.
They crowded about Joan to touch her feet, her horse, her armor, and they
even knelt in the road and kissed her horse's hoof-prints.
The land was full of her praises. The most illustrious chiefs of the
church wrote to the King extolling the Maid, comparing her to the saints
and heroes of the Bible, and warning him not to let "unbelief,
ingratitude, or other injustice" hinder or impair the divine help sent
through her. One might think there was a touch of prophecy in that, and
we will let it go at that; but to my mind it had its inspiration in those
great men's accurate knowledge of the King's trivial and treacherous
character.
The King had come to Tours to meet Joan. At the present day this poor
thing is called Charles the Victorious, on account of victories which
other people won for him, but in our time we had a private name for him
which described him better, and was sanctified to him by personal
deserving--Charles the Base. When we entered the presence he sat throned,
with his tinseled snobs and dandies around him. He looked like a forked
carrot, so tightly did his clothing fit him from his waist down; he wore
shoes with a rope-like pliant toe a foot long that had to be hitched up
to the knee to keep it out of the way; he had on a crimson velvet cape
that came no lower than his elbows; on his head he had a tall felt thing
like a thimble, with a feather it its jeweled band that stuck up like a
pen from an inkhorn, and from under that thimble his bush of stiff hair
stuck down to his shoulders, curving outward at the bottom, so that the
cap and the hair together made the head like a shuttlecock. All the
materials of his dress were rich, and all the colors brilliant. In his
lap he cuddled a miniature greyhound that snarled, lifting its lip and
showing its white teeth whenever any slight movement disturbed it. The
King's dandies were dressed in about the same fashion as himself, and
when I remembered that Joan had called the war-council of Orleans
"disguised ladies' maids," it reminded me of people who squander all
their money on a trifle and then haven't anything to invest when they
come across a better chance; that name ought to have been saved for these
creatures.
Joan fell on her knees before the majesty of France, and the other
frivolous animal in his lap--a sight which it pained me to see. What had
that man done for his country or for anybody in it, that she or any other
person should kneel to him? But she--she had just done the only great
deed that had been done for France in fifty years, and had consecrated it
with the libation of her blood. The positions should have been reversed.
However, to be fair, one must grant that Charles acquitted himself very
well for the most part, on that occasion--very much better than he was in
the habit of doing. He passed his pup to a courtier, and took off his cap
to Joan as if she had been a queen. Then he stepped from his throne and
raised her, and showed quite a spirited and manly joy and gratitude in
welcoming her and thanking her for her extraordinary achievement in his
service. My prejudices are of a later date than that. If he had continued
as he was at that moment, I should not have acquired them.
He acted handsomely. He said:
"You shall not kneel to me, my matchless General; you have wrought
royally, and royal courtesies are your due." Noticing that she was pale,
he said, "But you must not stand; you have lost blood for France, and
your wound is yet green--come." He led her to a seat and sat down by her.
"Now, then, speak out frankly, as to one who owes you much and freely
confesses it before all this courtly assemblage. What shall be your
reward? Name it."
I was ashamed of him. And yet that was not fair, for how could he be
expected to know this marvelous child in these few weeks, when we who
thought we had known her all her life were daily seeing the clouds
uncover some new altitudes of her character whose existence was not
suspected by us before? But we are all that way: when we know a thing we
have only scorn for other people who don't happen to know it. And I was
ashamed of these courtiers, too, for the way they licked their chops, so
to speak, as envying Joan her great chance, they not knowing her any
better than the King did. A blush began to rise in Joan's cheeks at the
thought that she was working for her country for pay, and she dropped her
head and tried to hide her face, as girls always do when they find
themselves blushing; no one knows why they do, but they do, and the more
they blush the more they fail to get reconciled to it, and the more they
can't bear to have people look at them when they are doing it. The King
made it a great deal worse by calling attention to it, which is the
unkindest thing a person can do when a girl is blushing; sometimes, when
there is a big crowd of strangers, it is even likely to make her cry if
she is as young as Joan was. God knows the reason for this, it is hidden
from men. As for me, I would as soon blush as sneeze; in fact, I would
rather. However, these meditations are not of consequence: I will go on
with what I was saying. The King rallied her for blushing, and this
brought up the rest of the blood and turned her face to fire. Then he was
sorry, seeing what he had done, and tried to make her comfortable by
saying the blush was exceeding becoming to her and not to mind it--which
caused even the dog to notice it now, so of course the red in Joan's face
turned to purple, and the tears overflowed and ran down--I could have
told anybody that that would happen. The King was distressed, and saw
that the best thing to do would be to get away from this subject, so he
began to say the finest kind of things about Joan's capture of the
Tourelles, and presently when she was more composed he mentioned the
reward again and pressed her to name it. Everybody listened with anxious
interest to hear what her claim was going to be, but when her answer came
their faces showed that the thing she asked for was not what they had
been expecting.
"Oh, dear and gracious Dauphin, I have but one desire--only one. If--"
"Do not be afraid, my child--name it."
"That you will not delay a day. My army is strong and valiant, and eager
to finish its work--march with me to Rheims and receive your crown." You
could see the indolent King shrink, in his butterfly clothes.
"To Rheims--oh, impossible, my General! We march through the heart of
England's power?"
Could those be French faces there? Not one of them lighted in response to
the girl's brave proposition, but all promptly showed satisfaction in the
King's objection. Leave this silken idleness for the rude contact of war?
None of these butterflies desired that. They passed their jeweled
comfit-boxes one to another and whispered their content in the head
butterfly's practical prudence. Joan pleaded with the King, saying:
"Ah, I pray you do not throw away this perfect opportunity. Everything is
favorable--everything. It is as if the circumstances were specially made
for it. The spirits of our army are exalted with victory, those of the
English forces depressed by defeat. Delay will change this. Seeing us
hesitate to follow up our advantage, our men will wonder, doubt, lose
confidence, and the English will wonder, gather courage, and be bold
again. Now is the time--pritheee let us march!"
The King shook his head, and La Tremouille, being asked for an opinion,
eagerly furnished it:
"Sire, all prudence is against it. Think of the English strongholds along
the Loire; think of those that lie between us and Rheims!"
He was going on, but Joan cut him short, and said, turning to him:
"If we wait, they will all be strengthened, reinforced. Will that
advantage us?"
"Why--no."
"Then what is your suggestion?--what is it that you would propose to do?"
"My judgment is to wait."
"Wait for what?"
The minister was obliged to hesitate, for he knew of no explanation that
would sound well. Moreover, he was not used to being catechized in this
fashion, with the eyes of a crowd of people on him, so he was irritated,
and said:
"Matters of state are not proper matters for public discussion."
Joan said placidly:
"I have to beg your pardon. My trespass came of ignorance. I did not know
that matters connected with your department of the government were
matters of state."
The minister lifted his brows in amused surprise, and said, with a touch
of sarcasm:
"I am the King's chief minister, and yet you had the impression that
matters connected with my department are not matters of state? Pray, how
is that?"
Joan replied, indifferently:
"Because there is no state."
"No state!"
"No, sir, there is no state, and no use for a minister. France is shrunk
to a couple of acres of ground; a sheriff's constable could take care of
it; its affairs are not matters of state. The term is too large."
The King did not blush, but burst into a hearty, careless laugh, and the
court laughed too, but prudently turned its head and did it silently. La
Tremouille was angry, and opened his mouth to speak, but the King put up
his hand, and said:
"There--I take her under the royal protection. She has spoken the truth,
the ungilded truth--how seldom I hear it! With all this tinsel on me and
all this tinsel about me, I am but a sheriff after all--a poor shabby
two-acre sheriff--and you are but a constable," and he laughed his
cordial laugh again. "Joan, my frank, honest General, will you name your
reward? I would ennoble you. You shall quarter the crown and the lilies
of France for blazon, and with them your victorious sword to defend
them--speak the word."
It made an eager buzz of surprise and envy in the assemblage, but Joan
shook her head and said:
"Ah, I cannot, dear and noble Dauphin. To be allowed to work for France,
to spend one's self for France, is itself so supreme a reward that
nothing can add to it--nothing. Give me the one reward I ask, the dearest
of all rewards, the highest in your gift--march with me to Rheims and
receive your crown. I will beg it on my knees."
But the King put his hand on her arm, and there was a really brave
awakening in his voice and a manly fire in his eye when he said:
"No, sit. You have conquered me--it shall be as you--"
But a warning sign from his minister halted him, and he added, to the
relief of the court:
"Well, well, we will think of it, we will think it over and see. Does
that content you, impulsive little soldier?"
The first part of the speech sent a glow of delight to Joan's face, but
the end of it quenched it and she looked sad, and the tears gathered in
her eyes. After a moment she spoke out with what seemed a sort of
terrified impulse, and said:
"Oh, use me; I beseech you, use me--there is but little time!"
"But little time?"
"Only a year--I shall last only a year."
"Why, child, there are fifty good years in that compact little body yet."
"Oh, you err, indeed you do. In one little year the end will come. Ah,
the time is so short, so short; the moments are flying, and so much to be
done. Oh, use me, and quickly--it is life or death for France."
Even those insects were sobered by her impassioned words. The King looked
very grave--grave, and strongly impressed. His eyes lit suddenly with an
eloquent fire, and he rose and drew his sword and raised it aloft; then
he brought it slowly down upon Joan's shoulder and said:
"Ah, thou art so simple, so true, so great, so noble--and by this
accolade I join thee to the nobility of France, thy fitting place! And
for thy sake I do hereby ennoble all thy family and all thy kin; and all
their descendants born in wedlock, not only in the male but also in the
female line. And more!--more! To distinguish thy house and honor it above
all others, we add a privilege never accorded to any before in the
history of these dominions: the females of thy line shall have and hold
the right to ennoble their husbands when these shall be of inferior
degree." [Astonishment and envy flared up in every countenance when the
words were uttered which conferred this extraordinary grace. The King
paused and looked around upon these signs with quite evident
satisfaction.] "Rise, Joan of Arc, now and henceforth surnamed Du Lis, in
grateful acknowledgment of the good blow which you have struck for the
lilies of France; and they, and the royal crown, and your own victorious
sword, fit and fair company for each other, shall be grouped in you
escutcheon and be and remain the symbol of your high nobility forever."
As my Lady Du Lis rose, the gilded children of privilege pressed forward
to welcome her to their sacred ranks and call her by her new name; but
she was troubled, and said these honors were not meet for one of her
lowly birth and station, and by their kind grace she would remain simple
Joan of Arc, nothing more--and so be called.
Nothing more! As if there could be anything more, anything higher,
anything greater. My Lady Du Lis--why, it was tinsel, petty, perishable.
But, JOAN OF ARC! The mere sound of it sets one's pulses leaping.
Chapter 24 Tinsel Trappings of Nobility
IT WAS vexatious to see what a to-do the whole town, and next the whole
country, made over the news. Joan of Arc ennobled by the King! People
went dizzy with wonder and delight over it. You cannot imagine how she
was gaped at, stared at, envied. Why, one would have supposed that some
great and fortunate thing had happened to her. But we did not think any
great things of it. To our minds no mere human hand could add a glory to
Joan of Arc. To us she was the sun soaring in the heavens, and her new
nobility a candle atop of it; to us it was swallowed up and lost in her
own light. And she was as indifferent to it and as unconscious of it as
the other sun would have been.
But it was different with her brothers. They were proud and happy in
their new dignity, which was quite natural. And Joan was glad it had been
conferred, when she saw how pleased they were. It was a clever thought in
the King to outflank her scruples by marching on them under shelter of
her love for her family and her kin.
Jean and Pierre sported their coats-of-arms right away; and their society
was courted by everybody, the nobles and commons alike. The
Standard-Bearer said, with some touch of bitterness, that he could see
that they just felt good to be alive, they were so soaked with the
comfort of their glory; and didn't like to sleep at all, because when
they were asleep they didn't know they were noble, and so sleep was a
clean loss of time. And then he said:
"They can't take precedence of me in military functions and state
ceremonies, but when it comes to civil ones and society affairs I judge
they'll cuddle coolly in behind you and the knights, and Noel and I will
have to walk behind them--hey?"
"Yes," I said, "I think you are right."
"I was just afraid of it--just afraid of it," said the Standard-Bearer,
with a sigh. "Afraid of it? I'm talking like a fool; of course I knew it.
Yes, I was talking like a fool."
Noel Rainguesson said, musingly:
"Yes, I noticed something natural about the tone of it."
We others laughed.
"Oh, you did, did you? You think you are very clever, don't you? I'll
take and wring your neck for you one of these days, Noel Rainguesson."
The Sieur de Metz said:
"Paladin, your fears haven't reached the top notch. They are away below
the grand possibilities. Didn't it occur to you that in civil and society
functions they will take precedence of all the rest of the personal
staff--every one of us?"
"Oh, come!"
"You'll find it's so. Look at their escutcheon. Its chiefest feature is
the lilies of France. It's royal, man, royal--do you understand the size
of that? The lilies are there by authority of the King--do you understand
the size of that? Though not in detail and in entirety, they do
nevertheless substantially quarter the arms of France in their coat.
Imagine it! consider it! measure the magnitude of it! We walk in front of
those boys? Bless you, we've done that for the last time. In my opinion
there isn't a lay lord in this whole region that can walk in front of
them, except the Duke d'Alencon, prince of the blood."
You could have knocked the Paladin down with a feather. He seemed to
actually turn pale. He worked his lips a moment without getting anything
out; then it came:
"I didn't know that, nor the half of it; how could I? I've been an idiot.
I see it now--I've been an idiot. I met them this morning, and sung out
hello to them just as I would to anybody. I didn't mean to be
ill-mannered, but I didn't know the half of this that you've been
telling. I've been an ass. Yes, that is all there is to it--I've been an
ass."
Noel Rainguesson said, in a kind of weary way:
"Yes, that is likely enough; but I don't see why you should seem
surprised at it."
"You don't, don't you? Well, why don't you?"
"Because I don't see any novelty about it. With some people it is a
condition which is present all the time. Now you take a condition which
is present all the time, and the results of that condition will be
uniform; this uniformity of result will in time become monotonous;
monotonousness, by the law of its being, is fatiguing. If you had
manifested fatigue upon noticing that you had been an ass, that would
have been logical, that would have been rational; whereas it seems to me
that to manifest surprise was to be again an ass, because the condition
of intellect that can enable a person to be surprised and stirred by
inert monotonousness is a--"
"Now that is enough, Noel Rainguesson; stop where you are, before you get
yourself into trouble. And don't bother me any more for some days or a
week an it please you, for I cannot abide your clack."
"Come, I like that! I didn't want to talk. I tried to get out of talking.
If you didn't want to hear my clack, what did you keep intruding your
conversation on me for?"
"I? I never dreamed of such a thing."
"Well, you did it, anyway. And I have a right to feel hurt, and I do feel
hurt, to have you treat me so. It seems to me that when a person goads,
and crowds, and in a manner forces another person to talk, it is neither
very fair nor very good-mannered to call what he says clack."
"Oh, snuffle--do! and break your heart, you poor thing. Somebody fetch
this sick doll a sugar-rag. Look you, Sir Jean de Metz, do you feel
absolutely certain about that thing?"
"What thing?"
"Why, that Jean and Pierre are going to take precedence of all the lay
noblesse hereabouts except the Duke d'Alencon?"
"I think there is not a doubt of it."
The Standard-Bearer was deep in thoughts and dreams a few moments, then
the silk-and-velvet expanse of his vast breast rose and fell with a sigh,
and he said:
"Dear, dear, what a lift it is! It just shows what luck can do. Well, I
don't care. I shouldn't care to be a painted accident--I shouldn't value
it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural
merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to
reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up
there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything--in
fact, the only thing. All else is dross."
Just then the bugles blew the assembly, and that cut our talk short.
Chapter 25 At Last--Forward!
THE DAYS began to waste away--and nothing decided, nothing done. The army
was full of zeal, but it was also hungry. It got no pay, the treasury was
getting empty, it was becoming impossible to feed it; under pressure of
privation it began to fall apart and disperse--which pleased the trifling
court exceedingly. Joan's distress was pitiful to see. She was obliged to
stand helpless while her victorious army dissolved away until hardly the
skeleton of it was left.
At last one day she went to the Castle of Loches, where the King was
idling. She found him consulting with three of his councilors, Robert le
Ma‡on, a former Chancellor of France, Christophe d'Harcourt, and Gerard
Machet. The Bastard of Orleans was present also, and it is through him
that we know what happened. Joan threw herself at the King's feet and
embraced his knees, saying:
"Noble Dauphin, prithee hold no more of these long and numerous councils,
but come, and come quickly, to Rheims and receive your crown."
Christophe d'Harcourt asked:
"Is it your Voices that command you to say that to the King?"
"Yes, and urgently."
"Then will you not tell us in the King's presence in what way the Voices
communicate with you?"
It was another sly attempt to trap Joan into indiscreet admissions and
dangerous pretensions. But nothing came of it. Joan's answer was simple
and straightforward, and the smooth Bishop was not able to find any fault
with it. She said that when she met with people who doubted the truth of
her mission she went aside and prayed, complaining of the distrust of
these, and then the comforting Voices were heard at her ear saying, soft
and low, "Go forward, Daughter of God, and I will help thee." Then she
added, "When I hear that, the joy in my heart, oh, it is insupportable!"
The Bastard said that when she said these words her face lit up as with a
flame, and she was like one in an ecstasy.
Joan pleaded, persuaded, reasoned; gaining ground little by little, but
opposed step by step by the council. She begged, she implored, leave to
march. When they could answer nothing further, they granted that perhaps
it had been a mistake to let the army waste away, but how could we help
it now? how could we march without an army?
"Raise one!" said Joan.
"But it will take six weeks."
"No matter--begin! let us begin!"
"It is too late. Without doubt the Duke of Bedford has been gathering
troops to push to the succor of his strongholds on the Loire."
"Yes, while we have been disbanding ours--and pity 'tis. But we must
throw away no more time; we must bestir ourselves."
The King objected that he could not venture toward Rheims with those
strong places on the Loire in his path. But Joan said:
"We will break them up. Then you can march."
With that plan the King was willing to venture assent. He could sit
around out of danger while the road was being cleared.
Joan came back in great spirits. Straightway everything was stirring.
Proclamations were issued calling for men, a recruiting-camp was
established at Selles in Berry, and the commons and the nobles began to
flock to it with enthusiasm.
A deal of the month of May had been wasted; and yet by the 6th of June
Joan had swept together a new army and was ready to march. She had eight
thousand men. Think of that. Think of gathering together such a body as
that in that little region. And these were veteran soldiers, too. In
fact, most of the men in France were soldiers, when you came to that; for
the wars had lasted generations now. Yes, most Frenchmen were soldiers;
and admirable runners, too, both by practice and inheritance; they had
done next to nothing but run for near a century. But that was not their
fault. They had had no fair and proper leadership--at least leaders with
a fair and proper chance. Away back, King and Court got the habit of
being treacherous to the leaders; then the leaders easily got the habit
of disobeying the King and going their own way, each for himself and
nobody for the lot. Nobody could win victories that way. Hence, running
became the habit of the French troops, and no wonder. Yet all that those
troops needed in order to be good fighters was a leader who would attend
strictly to business--a leader with all authority in his hands in place
of a tenth of it along with nine other generals equipped with an equal
tenth apiece. They had a leader rightly clothed with authority now, and
with a head and heart bent on war of the most intensely businesslike and
earnest sort--and there would be results. No doubt of that. They had Joan
of Arc; and under that leadership their legs would lose the art and
mystery of running.
Yes, Joan was in great spirits. She was here and there and everywhere,
all over the camp, by day and by night, pushing things. And wherever she
came charging down the lines, reviewing the troops, it was good to hear
them break out and cheer. And nobody could help cheering, she was such a
vision of young bloom and beauty and grace, and such an incarnation of
pluck and life and go! she was growing more and more ideally beautiful
every day, as was plain to be seen--and these were days of development;
for she was well past seventeen now--in fact, she was getting close upon
seventeen and a half--indeed, just a little woman, as you may say.
The two young Counts de Laval arrived one day--fine young fellows allied
to the greatest and most illustrious houses of France; and they could not
rest till they had seen Joan of Arc. So the King sent for them and
presented them to her, and you may believe she filled the bill of their
expectations. When they heard that rich voice of hers they must have
thought it was a flute; and when they saw her deep eyes and her face, and
the soul that looked out of that face, you could see that the sight of
her stirred them like a poem, like lofty eloquence, like martial music.
One of them wrote home to his people, and in his letter he said, "It
seemed something divine to see her and hear her." Ah, yes, and it was a
true word. Truer word was never spoken.
He saw her when she was ready to begin her march and open the campaign,
and this is what he said about it:
"She was clothed all in white armor save her head, and in her hand she
carried a little battle-ax; and when she was ready to mount her great
black horse he reared and plunged and would not let her. Then she said,
'Lead him to the cross.' This cross was in front of the church close by.
So they led him there. Then she mounted, and he never budged, any more
than if he had been tied. Then she turned toward the door of the church
and said, in her soft womanly voice, 'You, priests and people of the
Church, make processions and pray to God for us!' Then she spurred away,
under her standard, with her little ax in her hand, crying
'Forward--march!' One of her brothers, who came eight days ago, departed
with her; and he also was clad all in white armor."
I was there, and I saw it, too; saw it all, just as he pictures it. And I
see it yet--the little battle-ax, the dainty plumed cap, the white
armor--all in the soft June afternoon; I see it just as if it were
yesterday. And I rode with the staff--the personal staff--the staff of
Joan of Arc.
That young count was dying to go, too, but the King held him back for the
present. But Joan had made him a promise. In his letter he said:
"She told me that when the King starts for Rheims I shall go with him.
But God grant I may not have to wait till then, but may have a part in
the battles!"
She made him that promise when she was taking leave of my lady the
Duchess d'Alencon. The duchess was exacting a promise, so it seemed a
proper time for others to do the like. The duchess was troubled for her
husband, for she foresaw desperate fighting; and she held Joan to her
breast, and stroked her hair lovingly, and said:
"You must watch over him, dear, and take care of him, and send him back
to me safe. I require it of you; I will not let you go till you promise."
Joan said:
"I give you the promise with all my heart; and it is not just words, it
is a promise; you shall have him back without a hurt. Do you believe? And
are you satisfied with me now?"
The duchess could not speak, but she kissed Joan on the forehead; and so
they parted.
We left on the 6th and stopped over at Romorantin; then on the 9th Joan
entered Orleans in state, under triumphal arches, with the welcoming
cannon thundering and seas of welcoming flags fluttering in the breeze.
The Grand Staff rode with her, clothed in shining splendors of costume
and decorations: the Duke d'Alencon; the Bastard of Orleans; the Sire de
Boussac, Marshal of France; the Lord de Granville, Master of the
Crossbowmen; the Sire de Culan, Admiral of France; Ambroise de Lor;
Etienne de Vignoles, called La Hire; Gautier de Brusac, and other
illustrious captains.
It was grand times; the usual shoutings and packed multitudes, the usual
crush to get sight of Joan; but at last we crowded through to our old
lodgings, and I saw old Boucher and the wife and that dear Catherine
gather Joan to their hearts and smother her with kisses--and my heart
ached for her so! for I could have kissed Catherine better than anybody,
and more and longer; yet was not thought of for that office, and I so
famished for it. Ah, she was so beautiful, and oh, so sweet! I had loved
her the first day I ever saw her, and from that day forth she was sacred
to me. I have carried her image in my heart for sixty-three years--all
lonely thee, yes, solitary, for it never has had company--and I am grown
so old, so old; but it, oh, it is as fresh and young and merry and
mischievous and lovely and sweet and pure and witching and divine as it
was when it crept in there, bringing benediction and peace to its
habitation so long ago, so long ago--for it has not aged a day!
Chapter 26 The Last Doubts Scattered
THIS TIME, as before, the King's last command to the generals was this:
"See to it that you do nothing without the sanction of the Maid." And
this time the command was obeyed; and would continue to be obeyed all
through the coming great days of the Loire campaign.
That was a change! That was new! It broke the traditions. It shows you
what sort of a reputation as a commander-in-chief the child had made for
herself in ten days in the field. It was a conquering of men's doubts and
suspicions and a capturing and solidifying of men's belief and confidence
such as the grayest veteran on the Grand Staff had not been able to
achieve in thirty years. Don't you remember that when at sixteen Joan
conducted her own case in a grim court of law and won it, the old judge
spoke of her as "this marvelous child"? It was the right name, you see.
These veterans were not going to branch out and do things without the
sanction of the Maid--that is true; and it was a great gain. But at the
same time there were some among them who still trembled at her new and
dashing war tactics and earnestly desired to modify them. And so, during
the 10th, while Joan was slaving away at her plans and issuing order
after order with tireless industry, the old-time consultations and
arguings and speechifyings were going on among certain of the generals.
In the afternoon of that day they came in a body to hold one of these
councils of war; and while they waited for Joan to join them they
discussed the situation. Now this discussion is not set down in the
histories; but I was there, and I will speak of it, as knowing you will
trust me, I not being given to beguiling you with lies.
Gautier de Brusac was spokesman for the timid ones; Joan's side was
resolutely upheld by d'Alencon, the Bastard, La Hire, the Admiral of
France, the Marshal de Boussac, and all the other really important
chiefs.
De Brusac argued that the situation was very grave; that Jargeau, the
first point of attack, was formidably strong; its imposing walls
bristling with artillery; with seven thousand picked English veterans
behind them, and at their head the great Earl of Suffolk and his two
redoubtable brothers, the De la Poles. It seemed to him that the proposal
of Joan of Arc to try to take such a place by storm was a most rash and
over-daring idea, and she ought to be persuaded to relinquish it in favor
of the soberer and safer procedure of investment by regular siege. It
seemed to him that this fiery and furious new fashion of hurling masses
of men against impregnable walls of stone, in defiance of the established
laws and usages of war, was--
But he got no further. La Hire gave his plumed helm an impatient toss and
burst out with:
"By God, she knows her trade, and none can teach it her!"
And before he could get out anything more, D'Alencon was on his feet, and
the Bastard of Orleans, and a half a dozen others, all thundering at
once, and pouring out their indignant displeasure upon any and all that
mid hold, secretly or publicly, distrust of the wisdom of the
Commander-in-Chief. And when they had said their say, La Hire took a
chance again, and said:
"There are some that never know how to change. Circumstances may change,
but those people are never able to see that they have got to change too,
to meet those circumstances. All that they know is the one beaten track
that their fathers and grandfathers have followed and that they
themselves have followed in their turn. If an earthquake come and rip the
land to chaos, and that beaten track now lead over precipices and into
morasses, those people can't learn that they must strike out a new
road--no; they will march stupidly along and follow the old one, to death
and perdition. Men, there's a new state of things; and a surpassing
military genius has perceived it with her clear eye. And a new road is
required, and that same clear eye has noted where it must go, and has
marked it out for us. The man does not live, never has lived, never will
live, that can improve upon it! The old state of things was defeat,
defeat, defeat--and by consequence we had troops with no dash, no heart,
no hope. Would you assault stone walls with such? No--there was but one
way with that kind: sit down before a place and wait, wait--starve it
out, if you could. The new case is the very opposite; it is this: men all
on fire with pluck and dash and vim and fury and energy--a restrained
conflagration! What would you do with it? Hold it down and let it smolder
and perish and go out? What would Joan of Arc do with it? Turn it loose,
by the Lord God of heaven and earth, and let it swallow up the foe in the
whirlwind of its fires! Nothing shows the splendor and wisdom of her
military genius like her instant comprehension of the size of the change
which has come about, and her instant perception of the right and only
right way to take advantage of it. With her is no sitting down and
starving out; no dilly-dallying and fooling around; no lazying, loafing,
and going to sleep; no, it is storm! storm! storm! and still storm!
storm! storm! and forever storm! storm! storm! hunt the enemy to his
hole, then turn her French hurricanes loose and carry him by storm! And
that is my sort! Jargeau? What of Jargeau, with its battlements and
towers, its devastating artillery, its seven thousand picked veterans?
Joan of Arc is to the fore, and by the splendor of God its fate is
sealed!"
Oh, he carried them. There was not another word said about persuading
Joan to change her tactics. They sat talking comfortably enough after
that.
By and by Joan entered, and they rose and saluted with their swords, and
she asked what their pleasure might be. La Hire said:
"It is settled, my General. The matter concerned Jargeau. There were some
who thought we could not take the place."
Joan laughed her pleasant laugh, her merry, carefree laugh; the laugh
that rippled so buoyantly from her lips and made old people feel young
again to hear it; and she said to the company:
"Have no fears--indeed, there is no need nor any occasion for them. We
will strike the English boldly by assault, and you will see." Then a
faraway look came into her eyes, and I think that a picture of her home
drifted across the vision of her mind; for she said very gently, and as
one who muses, "But that I know God guides us and will give us success, I
had liefer keep sheep than endure these perils."
We had a homelike farewell supper that evening--just the personal staff
and the family. Joan had to miss it; for the city had given a banquet in
her honor, and she had gone there in state with the Grand Staff, through
a riot of joy-bells and a sparkling Milky Way of illuminations.
After supper some lively young folk whom we knew came in, and we
presently forgot that we were soldiers, and only remembered that we were
boys and girls and full of animal spirits and long-pent fun; and so there
was dancing, and games, and romps, and screams of laughter--just as
extravagant and innocent and noisy a good time as ever I had in my life.
Dear, dear, how long ago it was!--and I was young then. And outside, all
the while, was the measured tramp of marching battalions, belated odds
and ends of the French power gathering for the morrow's tragedy on the
grim stage of war. Yes, in those days we had those contrasts side by
side. And as I passed along to bed there was another one: the big Dwarf,
in brave new armor, sat sentry at Joan's door--the stern Spirit of War
made flesh, as it were--and on his ample shoulder was curled a kitten
asleep.
Chapter 27 How Joan Took Jargeau
WE MADE a gallant show next day when we filed out through the frowning
gates of Orleans, with banners flying and Joan and the Grand Staff in the
van of the long column. Those two young De Lavals were come now, and were
joined to the Grand Staff. Which was well; war being their proper trade,
for they were grandsons of that illustrious fighter Bertrand du Guesclin,
Constable of France in earlier days. Louis de Bourbon, the Marshal de
Rais, and the Vidame de Chartres were added also. We had a right to feel
a little uneasy, for we knew that a force of five thousand men was on its
way under Sir John Fastolfe to reinforce Jargeau, but I think we were not
uneasy, nevertheless. In truth, that force was not yet in our
neighborhood. Sir John was loitering; for some reason or other he was not
hurrying. He was losing precious time--four days at Etampes, and four
more at Janville.
We reached Jargeau and began business at once. Joan sent forward a heavy
force which hurled itself against the outworks in handsome style, and
gained a footing and fought hard to keep it; but it presently began to
fall back before a sortie from the city. Seeing this, Joan raised her
battle-cry and led a new assault herself under a furious artillery fire.
The Paladin was struck down at her side wounded, but she snatched her
standard from his failing hand and plunged on through the ruck of flying
missiles, cheering her men with encouraging cries; and then for a good
time one had turmoil, and clash of steel, and collision and confusion of
struggling multitudes, and the hoarse bellowing of the guns; and then the
hiding of it all under a rolling firmament of smoke--a firmament through
which veiled vacancies appeared for a moment now and then, giving fitful
dim glimpses of the wild tragedy enacting beyond; and always at these
times one caught sight of that slight figure in white mail which was the
center and soul of our hope and trust, and whenever we saw that, with its
back to us and its face to the fight, we knew that all was well. At last
a great shout went up--a joyous roar of shoutings, in fact--and that was
sign sufficient that the faubourgs were ours.
Yes, they were ours; the enemy had been driven back within the walls. On
the ground which Joan had won we camped; for night was coming on.
Joan sent a summons to the English, promising that if they surrendered
she would allow them to go in peace and take their horses with them.
Nobody knew that she could take that strong place, but she knew it --knew
it well; yet she offered that grace--offered it in a time when such a
thing was unknown in war; in a time when it was custom and usage to
massacre the garrison and the inhabitants of captured cities without pity
or compunction--yes, even to the harmless women and children sometimes.
There are neighbors all about you who well remember the unspeakable
atrocities which Charles the Bold inflicted upon the men and women and
children of Dinant when he took that place some years ago. It was a
unique and kindly grace which Joan offered that garrison; but that was
her way, that was her loving and merciful nature--she always did her best
to save her enemy's life and his soldierly pride when she had the mastery
of him.
The English asked fifteen days' armistice to consider the proposal in.
And Fastolfe coming with five thousand men! Joan said no. But she offered
another grace: they might take both their horses and their side-arms--but
they must go within the hour.
Well, those bronzed English veterans were pretty hard-headed folk. They
declined again. Then Joan gave command that her army be made ready to
move to the assault at nine in the morning. Considering the deal of
marching and fighting which the men had done that day, D'Alencon thought
the hour rather early; but Joan said it was best so, and so must be
obeyed. Then she burst out with one of those enthusiasms which were
always burning in her when battle was imminent, and said:
"Work! work! and God will work with us!"
Yes, one might say that her motto was "Work! stick to it; keep on
working!" for in war she never knew what indolence was. And whoever will
take that motto and live by it will likely to succeed. There's many a way
to win in this world, but none of them is worth much without good hard
work back out of it.
I think we should have lost our big Standard-Bearer that day, if our
bigger Dwarf had not been at hand to bring him out of the melee when he
was wounded. He was unconscious, and would have been trampled to death by
our own horse, if the Dwarf had not promptly rescued him and haled him to
the rear and safety. He recovered, and was himself again after two or
three hours; and then he was happy and proud, and made the most of his
wound, and went swaggering around in his bandages showing off like an
innocent big-child--which was just what he was. He was prouder of being
wounded than a really modest person would be of being killed. But there
was no harm in his vanity, and nobody minded it. He said he was hit by a
stone from a catapult--a stone the size of a man's head. But the stone
grew, of course. Before he got through with it he was claiming that the
enemy had flung a building at him.
"Let him alone," said Noel Rainguesson. "Don't interrupt his processes.
To-morrow it will be a cathedral."
He said that privately. And, sure enough, to-morrow it was a cathedral. I
never saw anybody with such an abandoned imagination.
Joan was abroad at the crack of dawn, galloping here and there and
yonder, examining the situation minutely, and choosing what she
considered the most effective positions for her artillery; and with such
accurate judgment did she place her guns that her Lieutenant-General's
admiration of it still survived in his memory when his testimony was
taken at the Rehabilitation, a quarter of a century later.
In this testimony the Duke d'Alencon said that at Jargeau that morning of
the 12th of June she made her dispositions not like a novice, but "with
the sure and clear judgment of a trained general of twenty or thirty
years' experience."
The veteran captains of the armies of France said she was great in war in
all ways, but greatest of all in her genius for posting and handling
artillery.
Who taught the shepherd-girl to do these marvels--she who could not read,
and had had no opportunity to study the complex arts of war? I do not
know any way to solve such a baffling riddle as that, there being no
precedent for it, nothing in history to compare it with and examine it
by. For in history there is no great general, however gifted, who arrived
at success otherwise than through able teaching and hard study and some
experience. It is a riddle which will never be guessed. I think these
vast powers and capacities were born in her, and that she applied them by
an intuition which could not err.
At eight o'clock all movement ceased, and with it all sounds, all noise.
A mute expectancy reigned. The stillness was something awful --because it
meant so much. There was no air stirring. The flags on the towers and
ramparts hung straight down like tassels. Wherever one saw a person, that
person had stopped what he was doing, and was in a waiting attitude, a
listening attitude. We were on a commanding spot, clustered around Joan.
Not far from us, on every hand, were the lanes and humble dwellings of
these outlying suburbs. Many people were visible--all were listening, not
one was moving. A man had placed a nail; he was about to fasten something
with it to the door-post of his shop--but he had stopped. There was his
hand reaching up holding the nail; and there was his other hand n the act
of striking with the hammer; but he had forgotten everything--his head
was turned aside listening. Even children unconsciously stopped in their
play; I saw a little boy with his hoop-stick pointed slanting toward the
ground in the act of steering the hoop around the corner; and so he had
stopped and was listening--the hoop was rolling away, doing its own
steering. I saw a young girl prettily framed in an open window, a
watering-pot in her hand and window-boxes of red flowers under its
spout--but the water had ceased to flow; the girl was listening.
Everywhere were these impressive petrified forms; and everywhere was
suspended movement and that awful stillness.
Joan of Arc raised her sword in the air. At the signal, the silence was
torn to rags; cannon after cannon vomited flames and smoke and delivered
its quaking thunders; and we saw answering tongues of fire dart from the
towers and walls of the city, accompanied by answering deep thunders, and
in a minute the walls and the towers disappeared, and in their place
stood vast banks and pyramids of snowy smoke, motionless in the dead air.
The startled girl dropped her watering-pot and clasped her hands
together, and at that moment a stone cannon-ball crashed through her fair
body.
The great artillery duel went on, each side hammering away with all its
might; and it was splendid for smoke and noise, and most exalting to
one's spirits. The poor little town around about us suffered cruelly. The
cannon-balls tore through its slight buildings, wrecking them as if they
had been built of cards; and every moment or two one would see a huge
rock come curving through the upper air above the smoke-clouds and go
plunging down through the roofs. Fire broke out, and columns of flame and
smoke rose toward the sky.
Presently the artillery concussions changed the weather. The sky became
overcast, and a strong wind rose and blew away the smoke that hid the
English fortresses.
Then the spectacle was fine; turreted gray walls and towers, and
streaming bright flags, and jets of red fire and gushes of white smoke in
long rows, all standing out with sharp vividness against the deep leaden
background of the sky; and then the whizzing missiles began to knock up
the dirt all around us, and I felt no more interest in the scenery. There
was one English gun that was getting our position down finer and finer
all the time. Presently Joan pointed to it and said:
"Fair duke, step out of your tracks, or that machine will kill you."
The Duke d'Alencon did as he was bid; but Monsieur du Lude rashly took
his place, and that cannon tore his head off in a moment.
Joan was watching all along for the right time to order the assault. At
last, about nine o'clock, she cried out:
"Now--to the assault!" and the buglers blew the charge.
Instantly we saw the body of men that had been appointed to this service
move forward toward a point where the concentrated fire of our guns had
crumbled the upper half of a broad stretch of wall to ruins; we saw this
force descend into the ditch and begin to plant the scaling-ladders. We
were soon with them. The Lieutenant-General thought the assault
premature. But Joan said:
"Ah, gentle duke, are you afraid? Do you not know that I have promised to
send you home safe?"
It was warm work in the ditches. The walls were crowded with men, and
they poured avalanches of stones down upon us. There was one gigantic
Englishman who did us more hurt than any dozen of his brethren. He always
dominated the places easiest of assault, and flung down exceedingly
troublesome big stones which smashed men and ladders both --then he would
near burst himself with laughing over what he had done. But the duke
settled accounts with him. He went and found the famous cannoneer, Jean
le Lorrain, and said:
"Train your gun--kill me this demon."
He did it with the first shot. He hit the Englishman fair in the breast
and knocked him backward into the city.
The enemy's resistance was so effective and so stubborn that our people
began to show signs of doubt and dismay. Seeing this, Joan raised her
inspiring battle-cry and descended into the fosse herself, the Dwarf
helping her and the Paladin sticking bravely at her side with the
standard. She started up a scaling-ladder, but a great stone flung from
above came crashing down upon her helmet and stretched her, wounded and
stunned, upon the ground. But only for a moment. The Dwarf stood her upon
her feet, and straightway she started up the ladder again, crying:
"To the assault, friends, to the assault--the English are ours! It is the
appointed hour!"
There was a grand rush, and a fierce roar of war-cries, and we swarmed
over the ramparts like ants. The garrison fled, we pursued; Jargeau was
ours!
The Earl of Suffolk was hemmed in and surrounded, and the Duke d'Alencon
and the Bastard of Orleans demanded that he surrender himself. But he was
a proud nobleman and came of a proud race. He refused to yield his sword
to subordinates, saying:
"I will die rather. I will surrender to the Maid of Orleans alone, and to
no other."
And so he did; and was courteously and honorably used by her.
His two brothers retreated, fighting step by step, toward the bridge, we
pressing their despairing forces and cutting them down by scores. Arrived
on the bridge, the slaughter still continued. Alexander de la Pole was
pushed overboard or fell over, and was drowned. Eleven hundred men had
fallen; John de la Pole decided to give up the struggle. But he was
nearly as proud and particular as his brother of Suffolk as to whom he
would surrender to. The French officer nearest at hand was Guillaume
Renault, who was pressing him closely. Sir John said to him:
"Are you a gentleman?"
"Yes."
"And a knight?"
"No."
Then Sir John knighted him himself there on the bridge, giving him the
accolade with English coolness and tranquillity in the midst of that
storm of slaughter and mutilation; and then bowing with high courtesy
took the sword by the blade and laid the hilt of it in the man's hand in
token of surrender. Ah, yes, a proud tribe, those De la Poles.
It was a grand day, a memorable day, a most splendid victory. We had a
crowd of prisoners, but Joan would not allow them to be hurt. We took
them with us and marched into Orleans next day through the usual tempest
of welcome and joy.
And this time there was a new tribute to our leader. From everywhere in
the packed streets the new recruits squeezed their way to her side to
touch the sword of Joan of Arc and draw from it somewhat of that
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,
Volume 1, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC VOL. 2
by Mark Twain
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC
by THE SIEUR LOUIS DE CONTE
(her page and secretary)
In Two Volumes
Volume 2.
Freely translated out of the ancient French into modern English
from the original unpublished manuscript in the National Archives
of France
Contents
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 Wit's 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
Chapter 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 do 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 though 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 Ii 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,
thee 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 p'ans 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 heave, 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 Abb, 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 t--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 ben
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.
Chapter 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 he 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 our 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 thee 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 truck 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 Vend"me, 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
hobble 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, an 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
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 curse
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 sword 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 you do, for in truth I am sent of God and you are
putting yourself in great danger."
Beaupere asked her if the Voice's counsels were not fickle and variable.
"No. It never contradicts itself. This very day it has told me again to
answer boldly."
"Has it forbidden you to answer only part of what is asked you?"
"I will tell you nothing as to that. I have revelations touching the King
my master, and those I will not tell you." Then she was stirred by a
great emotion, and the tears sprang to her eyes and she spoke out as with
strong conviction, saying:
"I believe wholly--as wholly as I believe the Christian faith and that
God has redeemed us from the fires of hell, that God speaks to me by that
Voice!"
Being questioned further concerning the Voice, she said she was not at
liberty to tell all she knew.
"Do you think God would be displeased at your telling the whole truth?"
"The Voice has commanded me to tell the King certain things, and not
you--and some very lately--even last night; things which I would he knew.
He would be more easy at his dinner."
"Why doesn't the Voice speak to the King itself, as it did when you were
with him? Would it not if you asked it?"
"I do not know if it be the wish of God." She was pensive a moment or
two, busy with her thoughts and far away, no doubt; then she added a
remark in which Beaupere, always watchful, always alert, detected a
possible opening--a chance to set a trap. Do you think he jumped at it
instantly, betraying the joy he had in his mind, as a young hand at craft
and artifice would do?
No, oh, no, you could not tell that he had noticed the remark at all. He
slid indifferently away from it at once, and began to ask idle questions
about other things, so as to slip around and spring on it from behind, so
to speak: tedious and empty questions as to whether the Voice had told
her she would escape from this prison; and if it had furnished answers to
be used by her in to-day's seance; if it was accompanied with a glory of
light; if it had eyes, etc. That risky remark of Joan's was this:
"Without the Grace of God I could do nothing."
The court saw the priest's game, and watched his play with a cruel
eagerness. Poor Joan was grown dreamy and absent; possibly she was tired.
Her life was in imminent danger, and she did not suspect it. The time was
ripe now, and Beaupere quietly and stealthily sprang his trap:
"Are you in a state of Grace?"
Ah, we had two or three honorable brave men in that pack of judges; and
Jean Lefevre was one of them. He sprang to his feet and cried out:
"It is a terrible question! The accused is not obliged to answer it!"
Cauchon's face flushed black with anger to see this plank flung to the
perishing child, and he shouted:
"Silence! and take your seat. The accused will answer the question!"
There was no hope, no way out of the dilemma; for whether she said yes or
whether she said no, it would be all the same--a disastrous answer, for
the Scriptures had said one cannot know this thing. Think what hard
hearts they were to set this fatal snare for that ignorant young girl and
be proud of such work and happy in it. It was a miserable moment for me
while we waited; it seemed a year. All the house showed excitement; and
mainly it was glad excitement. Joan looked out upon these hungering faces
with innocent, untroubled eyes, and then humbly and gently she brought
out that immortal answer which brushed the formidable snare away as it
had been but a cobweb:
"If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in
it, I pray God keep me so."
Ah, you will never see an effect like that; no, not while you live. For a
space there was the silence of the grave. Men looked wondering into each
other's faces, and some were awed and crossed themselves; and I heard
Lefevre mutter:
"It was beyond the wisdom of man to devise that answer. Whence comes this
child's amazing inspirations?"
Beaupere presently took up his work again, but the humiliation of his
defeat weighed upon him, and he made but a rambling and dreary business
of it, he not being able to put any heart in it.
He asked Joan a thousand questions about her childhood and about the oak
wood, and the fairies, and the children's games and romps under our dear
Arbre Fee Bourlemont, and this stirring up of old memories broke her
voice and made her cry a little, but she bore up as well as she could,
and answered everything.
Then the priest finished by touching again upon the matter of her
apparel--a matter which was never to be lost sight of in this still-hunt
for this innocent creature's life, but kept always hanging over her, a
menace charged with mournful possibilities:
"Would you like a woman's dress?"
"Indeed yes, if I may go out from this prison--but here, no."
8 Joan Tells of Her Visions
THE COURT met next on Monday the 27th. Would you believe it? The Bishop
ignored the contract limiting the examination to matters set down in the
proces verbal and again commanded Joan to take the oath without
reservations. She said:
"You should be content I have sworn enough."
She stood her ground, and Cauchon had to yield.
The examination was resumed, concerning Joan's Voices.
"You have said that you recognized them as being the voices of angels the
third time that you heard them. What angels were they?"
"St. Catherine and St. Marguerite."
"How did you know that it was those two saints? How could you tell the
one from the other?"
"I know it was they; and I know how to distinguish them."
"By what sign?"
"By their manner of saluting me. I have been these seven years under
their direction, and I knew who they were because they told me."
"Whose was the first Voice that came to you when you were thirteen years
old?"
"It was the Voice of St. Michael. I saw him before my eyes; and he was
not alone, but attended by a cloud of angels."
"Did you see the archangel and the attendant angels in the body, or in
the spirit?"
"I saw them with the eyes of my body, just as I see you; and when they
went away I cried because they did not take me with them."
It made me see that awful shadow again that fell dazzling white upon her
that day under l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont, and it made me shiver again,
though it was so long ago. It was really not very long gone by, but it
seemed so, because so much had happened since.
"In what shape and form did St. Michael appear?"
"As to that, I have not received permission to speak."
"What did the archangel say to you that first time?"
"I cannot answer you to-day."
Meaning, I think, that she would have to get permission of her Voices
first.
Presently, after some more questions as to the revelations which had been
conveyed through her to the King, she complained of the unnecessity of
all this, and said:
"I will say again, as I have said before many times in these sittings,
that I answered all questions of this sort before the court at Poitiers,
and I would hat you wold bring here the record of that court and read
from that. Prithee, send for that book."
There was no answer. It was a subject that had to be got around and put
aside. That book had wisely been gotten out of the way, for it contained
things which would be very awkward here.
Among them was a decision that Joan's mission was from God, whereas it
was the intention of this inferior court to show that it was from the
devil; also a decision permitting Joan to wear male attire, whereas it
was the purpose of this court to make the male attire do hurtful work
against her.
"How was it that you were moved to come into France--by your own desire?"
"Yes, and by command of God. But that it was His will I would note have
come. I would sooner have had my body torn in sunder by horses than come,
lacking that."
Beaupere shifted once more to the matter of the male attire, now, and
proceeded to make a solemn talk about it. That tried Joan's patience; and
presently she interrupted and said:
"It is a trifling thing and of no consequence. And I did not put it on by
counsel of any man, but by command of God."
"Robert de Baudricourt did not order you to wear it?"
"No."
"Did you think you did well in taking the dress of a man?"
"I did well to do whatsoever thing God commanded me to do."
"But in this particular case do you think you did well in taking the
dress of a man?"
"I have done nothing but by command of God."
Beaupere made various attempts to lead her into contradictions of
herself; also to put her words and acts in disaccord with the Scriptures.
But it was lost time. He did not succeed. He returned to her visions, the
light which shone about them, her relations with the King, and so on.
"Was there an angel above the King's head the first time you saw him?"
"By the Blessed Mary!--"
She forced her impatience down, and finished her sentence with
tranquillity: "If there was one I did not see it."
"Was there light?"
"There were more than three thousand soldiers there, and five hundred
torches, without taking account of spiritual light."
"What made the King believe in the revelations which you brought him?"
"He had signs; also the counsel of the clergy."
"What revelations were made to the King?"
"You will not get that out of me this year."
Presently she added: "During three weeks I was questioned by the clergy
at Chinon and Poitiers. The King had a sign before he would believe; and
the clergy were of opinion that my acts were good and not evil."
The subject was dropped now for a while, and Beaupere took up the matter
of the miraculous sword of Fierbois to see if he could not find a chance
there to fix the crime of sorcery upon Joan.
"How did you know that there was an ancient sword buried in the ground
under the rear of the altar of the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois?"
Joan had no concealments to make as to this:
"I knew the sword was there because my Voices told me so; and I sent to
ask that it be given to me to carry in the wars. It seemed to me that it
was not very deep in the ground. The clergy of the church caused it to be
sought for and dug up; and they polished it, and the rust fell easily off
from it."
"Were you wearing it when you were taken in battle at Compiegne?"
"No. But I wore it constantly until I left St. Denis after the attack
upon Paris."
This sword, so mysteriously discovered and so long and so constantly
victorious, was suspected of being under the protection of enchantment.
"Was that sword blest? What blessing had been invoked upon it?"
"None. I loved it because it was found in the church of St. Catherine,
for I loved that church very dearly."
She loved it because it had been built in honor of one of her angels.
"Didn't you lay it upon the altar, to the end that it might be lucky?"
(The altar of St. Denis.) "No."
"Didn't you pray that it might be made lucky?"
"Truly it were no harm to wish that my harness might be fortunate."
"Then it was not that sword which you wore in the field of Compiegne?
What sword did you wear there?"
"The sword of the Burgundian Franquet d'Arras, whom I took prisoner in
the engagement at Lagny. I kept it because it was a good war-sword--good
to lay on stout thumps and blows with."
She said that quite simply; and the contrast between her delicate little
self and the grim soldier words which she dropped with such easy
familiarity from her lips made many spectators smile.
"What is become of the other sword? Where is it now?"
"Is that in the proces verbal?"
Beaupere did not answer.
"Which do you love best, your banner or your sword?"
Her eye lighted gladly at the mention of her banner, and she cried out:
"I love my banner best--oh, forty times more than the sword! Sometimes I
carried it myself when I charged the enemy, to avoid killing any one."
Then she added, naively, and with again that curious contrast between her
girlish little personality and her subject, "I have never killed anyone."
It made a great many smile; and no wonder, when you consider what a
gentle and innocent little thing she looked. One could hardly believe she
had ever even seen men slaughtered, she look so little fitted for such
things.
"In the final assault at Orleans did you tell your soldiers that the
arrows shot by the enemy and the stones discharged from their catapults
would not strike any one but you?"
"No. And the proof its, that more than a hundred of my men were struck. I
told them to have no doubts and no fears; that they would raise the
siege. I was wounded in the neck by an arrow in the assault upon the
bastille that commanded the bridge, but St. Catherine comforted me and I
was cured in fifteen days without having to quit the saddle and leave my
work."
"Did you know that you were going to be wounded?"
"Yes; and I had told it to the King beforehand. I had it from my Voices."
"When you took Jargeau, why did you not put its commandant to ransom?"
"I offered him leave to go out unhurt from the place, with all his
garrison; and if he would not I would take it by storm."
"And you did, I believe."
"Yes."
"Had your Voices counseled you to take it by storm?"
"As to that, I do not remember."
Thus closed a weary long sitting, without result. Every device that could
be contrived to trap Joan into wrong thinking, wrong doing, or disloyalty
to the Church, or sinfulness as a little child at home or later, had been
tried, and none of them had succeeded. She had come unscathed through the
ordeal.
Was the court discouraged? No. Naturally it was very much surprised, very
much astonished, to find its work baffling and difficult instead of
simple and easy, but it had powerful allies in the shape of hunger, cold,
fatigue, persecution, deception, and treachery; and opposed to this array
nothing but a defenseless and ignorant girl who must some time or other
surrender to bodily and mental exhaustion or get caught in one of the
thousand traps set for her.
And had the court made no progress during these seemingly resultless
sittings? Yes. It had been feeling its way, groping here, groping there,
and had found one or two vague trails which might freshen by and by and
lead to something. The male attire, for instance, and the visions and
Voices. Of course no one doubted that she had seen supernatural beings
and been spoken to and advised by them. And of course no one doubted that
by supernatural help miracles had been done by Joan, such as choosing out
the King in a crowd when she had never seen him before, and her discovery
of the sword buried under the altar. It would have been foolish to doubt
these things, for we all know that the air is full of devils and angels
that are visible to traffickers in magic on the one hand and to the
stainlessly holy on the other; but what many and perhaps most did doubt
was, that Joan's visions, Voices, and miracles came from God. It was
hoped that in time they could be proven to have been of satanic origin.
Therefore, as you see, the court's persistent fashion of coming back to
that subject every little while and spooking around it and prying into it
was not to pass the time--it had a strictly business end in view.
9 Her Sure Deliverance Foretold
THE NEXT sitting opened on Thursday the first of March. Fifty-eight
judges present--the others resting.
As usual, Joan was required to take an oath without reservations. She
showed no temper this time. She considered herself well buttressed by the
proces verbal compromise which Cauchon was so anxious to repudiate and
creep out of; so she merely refused, distinctly and decidedly; and added,
in a spirit of fairness and candor:
"But as to matters set down in the proces verbal, I will freely tell the
whole truth--yes, as freely and fully as if I were before the Pope."
Here was a chance! We had two or three Popes, then; only one of them
could be the true Pope, of course. Everybody judiciously shirked the
question of which was the true Pope and refrained from naming him, it
being clearly dangerous to go into particulars in this matter. Here was
an opportunity to trick an unadvised girl into bringing herself into
peril, and the unfair judge lost no time in taking advantage of it. He
asked, in a plausibly indolent and absent way:
"Which one do you consider to be the true Pope?"
The house took an attitude of deep attention, and so waited to hear the
answer and see the prey walk into the trap. But when the answer came it
covered the judge with confusion, and you could see many people covertly
chuckling. For Joan asked in a voice and manner which almost deceived
even me, so innocent it seemed:
"Are there two?"
One of the ablest priests in that body and one of the best swearers
there, spoke right out so that half the house heard him, and said:
"By God, it was a master stroke!"
As soon as the judge was better of his embarrassment he came back to the
charge, but was prudent and passed by Joan's question:
"Is it true that you received a letter from the Count of Armagnac asking
you which of the three Popes he ought to obey?"
"Yes, and answered it."
Copies of both letters were produced and read. Joan said that hers had
not been quite strictly copied. She said she had received the Count's
letter when she was just mounting her horse; and added:
"So, in dictating a word or two of reply I said I would try to answer him
from Paris or somewhere where I could be at rest."
She was asked again which Pope she had considered the right one.
"I was not able to instruct the Count of Armagnac as to which one he
ought to obey"; then she added, with a frank fearlessness which sounded
fresh and wholesome in that den of trimmers and shufflers, "but as for
me, I hold that we are bound to obey our Lord the Pope who is at Rome."
The matter was dropped. They produced and read a copy of Joan's first
effort at dictating--her proclamation summoning the English to retire
from the siege of Orleans and vacate France--truly a great and fine
production for an unpractised girl of seventeen.
"Do you acknowledge as your own the document which has just been read?"
"Yes, except that there are errors in it--words which make me give myself
too much importance." I saw what was coming; I was troubled and ashamed.
"For instance, I did not say 'Deliver up to the Maid' (rendez au la
Pucelle); I said 'Deliver up to the King' (rendez au Roi); and I did not
call myself 'Commander-in-Chief' (chef de guerre). All those are words
which my secretary substituted; or mayhap he misheard me or forgot what I
said."
She did not look at me when she said it: she spared me that
embarrassment. I hadn't misheard her at all, and hadn't forgotten. I
changed her language purposely, for she was Commander-in-Chief and
entitled to call herself so, and it was becoming and proper, too; and who
was going to surrender anything to the King?--at that time a stick, a
cipher? If any surrendering was done, it would be to the noble Maid of
Vaucouleurs, already famed and formidable though she had not yet struck a
blow.
Ah, there would have been a fine and disagreeable episode (for me) there,
if that pitiless court had discovered that the very scribbler of that
piece of dictation, secretary to Joan of Arc, was present--and not only
present, but helping build the record; and not only that, but destined at
a far distant day to testify against lies and perversions smuggled into
it by Cauchon and deliver them over to eternal infamy!
"Do you acknowledge that you dictated this proclamation?"
"I do."
"Have you repented of it? Do you retract it?"
Ah, then she was indignant!
"No! Not even these chains"--and she shook them--"not even these chains
can chill the hopes that I uttered there. And more!"--she rose, and stood
a moment with a divine strange light kindling in her face, then her words
burst forth as in a flood--"I warn you now that before seven years a
disaster will smite the English, oh, many fold greater than the fall of
Orleans! and--"
"Silence! Sit down!"
"--and then, soon after, they will lose all France!"
Now consider these things. The French armies no longer existed. The
French cause was standing still, our King was standing still, there was
no hint that by and by the Constable Richemont would come forward and
take up the great work of Joan of Arc and finish it. In face of all this,
Joan made that prophecy--made it with perfect confidence--and it came
true. For within five years Paris fell--1436--and our King marched into
it flying the victor's flag. So the first part of the prophecy was then
fulfilled--in fact, almost the entire prophecy; for, with Paris in our
hands, the fulfilment of the rest of it was assured.
Twenty years later all France was ours excepting a single town--Calais.
Now that will remind you of an earlier prophecy of Joan's. At the time
that she wanted to take Paris and could have done it with ease if our
King had but consented, she said that that was the golden time; that,
with Paris ours, all France would be ours in six months. But if this
golden opportunity to recover France was wasted, said she, "I give you
twenty years to do it in."
She was right. After Paris fell, in 1436, the rest of the work had to be
done city by city, castle by castle, and it took twenty years to finish
it.
Yes, it was the first day of March, 1431, there in the court, that she
stood in the view of everybody and uttered that strange and incredible
prediction. Now and then, in this world, somebody's prophecy turns up
correct, but when you come to look into it there is sure to be
considerable room for suspicion that the prophecy was made after the
fact. But here the matter is different. There in that court Joan's
prophecy was set down in the official record at the hour and moment of
its utterance, years before the fulfilment, and there you may read it to
this day.
Twenty-five years after Joan's death the record was produced in the great
Court of the Rehabilitation and verified under oath by Manchon and me,
and surviving judges of our court confirmed the exactness of the record
in their testimony.
Joan' startling utterance on that now so celebrated first of March
stirred up a great turmoil, and it was some time before it quieted down
again. Naturally, everybody was troubled, for a prophecy is a grisly and
awful thing, whether one thinks it ascends from hell or comes down from
heaven.
All that these people felt sure of was, that the inspiration back of it
was genuine and puissant.
They would have given their right hands to know the source of it.
At last the questions began again.
"How do you know that those things are going to happen?"
"I know it by revelation. And I know it as surely as I know that you sit
here before me."
This sort of answer was not going to allay the spreading uneasiness.
Therefore, after some further dallying the judge got the subject out of
the way and took up one which he could enjoy more.
"What languages do your Voices speak?"
"French."
"St. Marguerite, too?"
"Verily; why not? She is on our side, not on the English!"
Saints and angels who did not condescend to speak English is a grave
affront. They could not be brought into court and punished for contempt,
but the tribunal could take silent note of Joan's remark and remember it
against her; which they did. It might be useful by and by.
"Do your saints and angels wear jewelry?--crowns, rings, earrings?"
To Joan, questions like these were profane frivolities and not worthy of
serious notice; she answered indifferently. But the question brought to
her mind another matter, and she turned upon Cauchon and said:
"I had two rings. They have been taken away from me during my captivity.
You have one of them. It is the gift of my brother. Give it back to me.
If not to me, then I pray that it be given to the Church."
The judges conceived the idea that maybe these rings were for the working
of enchantments.
Perhaps they could be made to do Joan a damage.
"Where is the other ring?"
"The Burgundians have it."
"Where did you get it?"
"My father and mother gave it to me."
"Describe it."
"It is plain and simple and has 'Jesus and Mary' engraved upon it."
Everybody could see that that was not a valuable equipment to do devil's
work with. So that trail was not worth following. Still, to make sure,
one of the judges asked Joan if she had ever cured sick people by
touching them with the ring. She said no.
"Now as concerning the fairies, that were used to abide near by Domremy
whereof there are many reports and traditions. It is said that your
godmother surprised these creatures on a summer's night dancing under the
tree called l'Arbre Fee de Bourlemont. Is it not possible that your
pretended saints and angles are but those fairies?"
"Is that in your proces?"
She made no other answer.
"Have you not conversed with St. Marguerite and St. Catherine under that
tree?"
"I do not know."
"Or by the fountain near the tree?"
"Yes, sometimes."
"What promises did they make you?"
"None but such as they had God's warrant for."
"But what promises did they make?"
"That is not in your proces; yet I will say this much: they told me that
the King would become master of his kingdom in spite of his enemies."
"And what else?"
There was a pause; then she said humbly:
"They promised to lead me to Paradise."
If faces do really betray what is passing in men's minds, a fear came
upon many in that house, at this time, that maybe, after all, a chosen
servant and herald of God was here being hunted to her death. The
interest deepened. Movements and whisperings ceased: the stillness became
almost painful.
Have you noticed that almost from the beginning the nature of the
questions asked Joan showed that in some way or other the questioner very
often already knew his fact before he asked his question? Have you
noticed that somehow or other the questioners usually knew just how and
were to search for Joan's secrets; that they really knew the bulk of her
privacies--a fact not suspected by her--and that they had no task before
them but to trick her into exposing those secrets?
Do you remember Loyseleur, the hypocrite, the treacherous priest, tool of
Cauchon? Do you remember that under the sacred seal of the confessional
Joan freely and trustingly revealed to him everything concerning her
history save only a few things regarding her supernatural revelations
which her Voices had forbidden her to tell to any one--and that the
unjust judge, Cauchon, was a hidden listener all the time?
Now you understand how the inquisitors were able to devise that long
array of minutely prying questions; questions whose subtlety and
ingenuity and penetration are astonishing until we come to remember
Loyseleur's performance and recognize their source. Ah, Bishop of
Beauvais, you are now lamenting this cruel iniquity these many years in
hell! Yes verily, unless one has come to your help. There is but one
among the redeemed that would do it; and it is futile to hope that that
one has not already done it--Joan of Arc.
We will return to the questionings.
"Did they make you still another promise?"
"Yes, but that is not in your proces. I will not tell it now, but before
three months I will tell it you."
The judge seems to know the matter he is asking about, already; one gets
this idea from his next question.
"Did your Voices tell you that you would be liberated before three
months?"
Joan often showed a little flash of surprise at the good guessing of the
judges, and she showed one this time. I was frequently in terror to find
my mind (which I could not control) criticizing the Voices and saying,
"They counsel her to speak boldly--a thing which she would do without any
suggestion from them or anybody else--but when it comes to telling her
any useful thing, such as how these conspirators manage to guess their
way so skilfully into her affairs, they are always off attending to some
other business."
I am reverent by nature; and when such thoughts swept through my head
they made me cold with fear, and if there was a storm and thunder at the
time, I was so ill that I could but with difficulty abide at my post and
do my work.
Joan answered:
"That is not in your proces. I do not know when I shall be set free, but
some who wish me out of this world will go from it before me."
It made some of them shiver.
"Have your Voices told you that you will be delivered from this prison?"
Without a doubt they had, and the judge knew it before he asked the
question.
"Ask me again in three months and I will tell you." She said it with such
a happy look, the tired prisoner! And I? And Noel Rainguesson, drooping
yonder?--why, the floods of joy went streaming through us from crown to
sole! It was all that we could do to hold still and keep from making
fatal exposure of our feelings.
She was to be set free in three months. That was what she meant; we saw
it. The Voices had told her so, and told her true--true to the very
day--May 30th. But we know now that they had mercifully hidden from her
how she was to be set free, but left her in ignorance. Home again!
That day was our understanding of it--Noel's and mine; that was our
dream; and now we would count the days, the hours, the minutes. They
would fly lightly along; they would soon be over.
Yes, we would carry our idol home; and there, far from the pomps and
tumults of the world, we would take up our happy life again and live it
out as we had begun it, in the free air and the sunshine, with the
friendly sheep and the friendly people for comrades, and the grace and
charm of the meadows, the woods, and the river always before our eyes and
their deep peace in our hearts. Yes, that was our dream, the dream that
carried us bravely through that three months to an exact and awful
fulfilment, the though of which would have killed us, I think, if we had
foreknown it and been obliged to bear the burden of it upon our hearts
the half of those weary days.
Our reading of the prophecy was this: We believed the King's soul was
going to be smitten with remorse; and that he would privately plan a
rescue with Joan's old lieutenants, D'Alencon and the Bastard and La
Hire, and that this rescue would take place at the end of the three
months. So we made up our minds to be ready and take a hand in it.
In the present and also in later sittings Joan was urged to name the
exact day of her deliverance; but she could not do that. She had not the
permission of her Voices. Moreover, the Voices themselves did not name
the precise day. Ever since the fulfilment of the prophecy, I have
believed that Joan had the idea that her deliverance was going to dome in
the form of death. But not that death! Divine as she was, dauntless as
she was in battle, she was human also. She was not solely a saint, an
angel, she was a clay-made girl also--as human a girl as any in the
world, and full of a human girl's sensitiveness and tenderness and
delicacies. And so, that death! No, she could not have lived the three
months with that one before her, I think. You remember that the first
time she was wounded she was frightened, and cried, just as any other
girl of seventeen would have done, although she had known for eighteen
days that she was going to be wounded on that very day. No, she was not
afraid of any ordinary death, and an ordinary death was what she believed
the prophecy of deliverance meant, I think, for her face showed
happiness, not horror, when she uttered it.
Now I will explain why I think as I do. Five weeks before she was
captured in the battle of Compiegne, her Voices told her what was coming.
They did not tell her the day or the place, but said she would be taken
prisoner and that it would be before the feast of St. John. She begged
that death, certain and swift, should be her fate, and the captivity
brief; for she was a free spirit, and dreaded the confinement. The Voices
made no promise, but only told her to bear whatever came. Now as they did
not refuse the swift death, a hopeful young thing like Joan would
naturally cherish that fact and make the most of it, allowing it to grow
and establish itself in her mind. And so now that she was told she was to
be "delivered" in three months, I think she believed it meant that she
would die in her bed in the prison, and that that was why she looked
happy and content--the gates of Paradise standing open for her, the time
so short, you see, her troubles so soon to be over, her reward so close
at hand. Yes, that would make her look happy, that would make her patient
and bold, and able to fight her fight out like a soldier. Save herself if
she could, of course, and try for the best, for that was the way she was
made; but die with her face to the front if die she must.
Then later, when she charged Cauchon with trying to kill her with a
poisoned fish, her notion that she was to be "delivered" by death in the
prison--if she had it, and I believe she had--would naturally be greatly
strengthened, you see.
But I am wandering from the trial. Joan was asked to definitely name the
time that she would be delivered from prison.
"I have always said that I was not permitted to tell you everything. I am
to be set free, and I desire to ask leave of my Voices to tell you the
day. That is why I wish for delay."
"Do your Voices forbid you to tell the truth?"
"Is it that you wish to know matters concerning the King of France? I
tell you again that he will regain his kingdom, and that I know it as
well as I know that you sit here before me in this tribunal." She sighed
and, after a little pause, added: "I should be dead but for this
revelation, which comforts me always."
Some trivial questions were asked her about St. Michael's dress and
appearance. She answered them with dignity, but one saw that they gave
her pain. After a little she said:
"I have great joy in seeing him, for when I see him I have the feeling
that I am not in mortal sin."
She added, "Sometimes St. Marguerite and St. Catherine have allowed me to
confess myself to them."
Here was a possible chance to set a successful snare for her innocence.
"When you confessed were you in mortal sin, do you think?"
But her reply did her no hurt. So the inquiry was shifted once more to
the revelations made to the King--secrets which the court had tried again
and again to force out of Joan, but without success.
"Now as to the sign given to the King--"
"I have already told you that I will tell you nothing about it."
"Do you know what the sign was?"
"As to that, you will not find out from me."
All this refers to Joan's secret interview with the King--held apart,
though two or three others were present. It was known--through Loyseleur,
of course--that this sign was a crown and was a pledge of the verity of
Joan's mission. But that is all a mystery until this day--the nature of
the crown, I mean--and will remain a mystery to the end of time. We can
never know whether a real crown descended upon the King's head, or only a
symbol, the mystic fabric of a vision.
"Did you see a crown upon the King's head when he received the
revelation?"
"I cannot tell you as to that, without perjury."
"Did the King have that crown at Rheims?"
"I think the King put upon his head a crown which he found there; but a
much richer one was brought him afterward."
"Have you seen that one?"
"I cannot tell you, without perjury. But whether I have seen it or not, I
have heard say that it was rich and magnificent."
They went on and pestered her to weariness about that mysterious crown,
but they got nothing more out of her. The sitting closed. A long, hard
day for all of us.
10 The Inquisitors at Their Wits' End
THE COURT rested a day, then took up work again on Saturday, the third of
March.
This was one of our stormiest sessions. The whole court was out of
patience; and with good reason. These threescore distinguished churchmen,
illustrious tacticians, veteran legal gladiators, had left important
posts where their supervision was needed, to journey hither from various
regions and accomplish a most simple and easy matter--condemn and send to
death a country-lass of nineteen who could neither read nor write, knew
nothing of the wiles and perplexities of legal procedure, could not call
a single witness in her defense, was allowed no advocate or adviser, and
must conduct her case by herself against a hostile judge and a packed
jury. In two hours she would be hopelessly entangled, routed, defeated,
convicted. Nothing could be more certain that this--so they thought. But
it was a mistake. The two hours had strung out into days; what promised
to be a skirmish had expanded into a siege; the thing which had looked so
easy had proven to be surprisingly difficult; the light victim who was to
have been puffed away like a feather remained planted like a rock; and on
top of all this, if anybody had a right to laugh it was the country-lass
and not the court.
She was not doing that, for that was not her spirit; but others were
doing it. The whole town was laughing in its sleeve, and the court knew
it, and its dignity was deeply hurt. The members could not hide their
annoyance.
And so, as I have said, the session was stormy. It was easy to see that
these men had made up their minds to force words from Joan to-day which
should shorten up her case and bring it to a prompt conclusion. It shows
that after all their experience with her they did not know her yet.
They went into the battle with energy. They did not leave the questioning
to a particular member; no, everybody helped. They volleyed questions at
Joan from all over the house, and sometimes so many were talking at once
that she had to ask them to deliver their fire one at a time and not by
platoons. The beginning was as usual:
"You are once more required to take the oath pure and simple."
"I will answer to what is in the proces verbal. When I do more, I will
choose the occasion for myself."
That old ground was debated and fought over inch by inch with great
bitterness and many threats. But Joan remained steadfast, and the
questionings had to shift to other matters. Half an hour was spent over
Joan's apparitions--their dress, hair, general appearance, and so on--in
the hope of fishing something of a damaging sort out of the replies; but
with no result.
Next, the male attire was reverted to, of course. After many well-worn
questions had been re-asked, one or two new ones were put forward.
"Did not the King or the Queen sometimes ask you to quit the male dress?"
"That is not in your proces."
"Do you think you would have sinned if you had taken the dress of your
sex?"
"I have done best to serve and obey my sovereign Lord and Master."
After a while the matter of Joan's Standard was taken up, in the hope of
connecting magic and witchcraft with it.
"Did not your men copy your banner in their pennons?"
"The lancers of my guard did it. It was to distinguish them from the rest
of the forces. It was their own idea."
"Were they often renewed?"
"Yes. When the lances were broken they were renewed."
The purpose of the question unveils itself in the next one.
"Did you not say to your men that pennons made like your banner would be
lucky?"
The soldier-spirit in Joan was offended at this puerility. She drew
herself up, and said with dignity and fire: "What I said to them was,
'Ride those English down!' and I did it myself."
Whenever she flung out a scornful speech like that at these French
menials in English livery it lashed them into a rage; and that is what
happened this time. There were ten, twenty, sometimes even thirty of them
on their feet at a time, storming at the prisoner minute after minute,
but Joan was not disturbed.
By and by there was peace, and the inquiry was resumed.
It was now sought to turn against Joan the thousand loving honors which
had been done her when she was raising France out of the dirt and shame
of a century of slavery and castigation.
"Did you not cause paintings and images of yourself to be made?"
"No. At Arras I saw a painting of myself kneeling in armor before the
King and delivering him a letter; but I caused no such things to be
made."
"Were not masses and prayers said in your honor?"
"If it was done it was not by my command. But if any prayed for me I
think it was no harm."
"Did the French people believe you were sent of God?"
"As to that, I know not; but whether they believed it or not, I was not
the less sent of God."
"If they thought you were sent of God, do you think it was well thought?"
"If they believed it, their trust was not abused."
"What impulse was it, think you, that moved the people to kiss your
hands, your feet, and your vestments?"
"They were glad to see me, and so they did those things; and I could not
have prevented them if I had had the heart. Those poor people came
lovingly to me because I had not done them any hurt, but had done the
best I could for them according to my strength."
See what modest little words she uses to describe that touching
spectacle, her marches about France walled in on both sides by the
adoring multitudes: "They were glad to see me." Glad?
Why they were transported with joy to see her. When they could not kiss
her hands or her feet, they knelt in the mire and kissed the hoof-prints
of her horse. They worshiped her; and that is what these priests were
trying to prove. It was nothing to them that she was not to blame for
what other people did. No, if she was worshiped, it was enough; she was
guilty of mortal sin.
Curious logic, one must say.
"Did you not stand sponsor for some children baptized at Rheims?"
"At Troyes I did, and at St. Denis; and I named the boys Charles, in
honor of the King, and the girls I named Joan."
"Did not women touch their rings to those which you wore?"
"Yes, many did, but I did not know their reason for it."
"At Rheims was your Standard carried into the church? Did you stand at
the altar with it in your hand at the Coronation?"
"Yes."
"In passing through the country did you confess yourself in the Churches
and receive the sacrament?"
"Yes."
"In the dress of a man?"
"Yes. But I do not remember that I was in armor."
It was almost a concession! almost a half-surrender of the permission
granted her by the Church at Poitiers to dress as a man. The wily court
shifted to another matter: to pursue this one at this time might call
Joan's attention to her small mistake, and by her native cleverness she
might recover her lost ground. The tempestuous session had worn her and
drowsed her alertness.
"It is reported that you brought a dead child to life in the church at
Lagny. Was that in answer to your prayers?"
"As to that, I have no knowledge. Other young girls were praying for the
child, and I joined them and prayed also, doing no more than they."
"Continue."
"While we prayed it came to life, and cried. It had been dead three days,
and was as black as my doublet. It was straight way baptized, then it
passed from life again and was buried in holy ground."
"Why did you jump from the tower of Beaurevoir by night and try to
escape?"
"I would go to the succor of Compiegne."
It was insinuated that this was an attempt to commit the deep crime of
suicide to avoid falling into the hands of the English.
"Did you not say that you would rather die than be delivered into the
power of the English?"
Joan answered frankly; without perceiving the trap:
"Yes; my words were, that I would rather that my soul be returned unto
God than that I should fall into the hands of the English."
It was now insinuated that when she came to, after jumping from the
tower, she was angry and blasphemed the name of God; and that she did it
again when she heard of the defection of the Commandant of Soissons. She
was hurt and indignant at this, and said:
"It is not true. I have never cursed. It is not my custom to swear."
11 The Court Reorganized for Assassination
A HALT was called. It was time. Cauchon was losing ground in the fight,
Joan was gaining it.
There were signs that here and there in the court a judge was being
softened toward Joan by her courage, her presence of mind, her fortitude,
her constancy, her piety, her simplicity and candor, her manifest purity,
the nobility of her character, her fine intelligence, and the good brave
fight she was making, all friendless and alone, against unfair odds, and
there was grave room for fear that this softening process would spread
further and presently bring Cauchon's plans in danger.
Something must be done, and it was done. Cauchon was not distinguished
for compassion, but he now gave proof that he had it in his character. He
thought it pity to subject so many judges to the prostrating fatigues of
this trial when it could be conducted plenty well enough by a handful of
them. Oh, gentle judge! But he did not remember to modify the fatigues
for the little captive.
He would let all the judges but a handful go, but he would select the
handful himself, and he did.
He chose tigers. If a lamb or two got in, it was by oversight, not
intention; and he knew what to do with lambs when discovered.
He called a small council now, and during five days they sifted the huge
bulk of answers thus far gathered from Joan. They winnowed it of all
chaff, all useless matter--that is, all matter favorable to Joan; they
saved up all matter which could be twisted to her hurt, and out of this
they constructed a basis for a new trial which should have the semblance
of a continuation of the old one. Another change. It was plain that the
public trial had wrought damage: its proceedings had been discussed all
over the town and had moved many to pity the abused prisoner. There
should be no more of that. The sittings should be secret hereafter, and
no spectators admitted. So Noel could come no more. I sent this news to
him. I had not the heart to carry it myself. I would give the pain a
chance to modify before I should see him in the evening.
On the 10th of March the secret trial began. A week had passed since I
had seen Joan. Her appearance gave me a great shock. She looked tired and
weak. She was listless and far away, and her answers showed that she was
dazed and not able to keep perfect run of all that was done and said.
Another court would not have taken advantage of her state, seeing that
her life was at stake here, but would have adjourned and spared her. Did
this one? No; it worried her for hours, and with a glad and eager
ferocity, making all it could out of this great chance, the first one it
had had.
She was tortured into confusing herself concerning the "sign" which had
been given the King, and the next day this was continued hour after hour.
As a result, she made partial revealments of particulars forbidden by her
Voices; and seemed to me to state as facts things which were but
allegories and visions mixed with facts.
The third day she was brighter, and looked less worn. She was almost her
normal self again, and did her work well. Many attempts were made to
beguile her into saying indiscreet things, but she saw the purpose in
view and answered with tact and wisdom.
"Do you know if St. Catherine and St. Marguerite hate the English?"
"They love whom Our Lord loves, and hate whom He hates."
"Does God hate the English?"
"Of the love or the hatred of God toward the English I know nothing."
Then she spoke up with the old martial ring in her voice and the old
audacity in her words, and added, "But I know this--that God will send
victory to the French, and that all the English will be flung out of
France but the dead ones!"
"Was God on the side of the English when they were prosperous in France?"
"I do not know if God hates the French, but I think that He allowed them
to be chastised for their sins."
It was a sufficiently naive way to account for a chastisement which had
now strung out for ninety-six years. But nobody found fault with it.
There was nobody there who would not punish a sinner ninety-six years if
he could, nor anybody there who would ever dream of such a thing as the
Lord's being any shade less stringent than men.
"Have you ever embraced St. Marguerite and St. Catherine?"
"Yes, both of them."
The evil face of Cauchon betrayed satisfaction when she said that.
"When you hung garlands upon L'Arbre Fee Bourlemont, did you do it in
honor of your apparitions?"
"No."
Satisfaction again. No doubt Cauchon would take it for granted that she
hung them there out of sinful love for the fairies.
"When the saints appeared to you did you bow, did you make reverence, did
you kneel?"
"Yes; I did them the most honor and reverence that I could."
A good point for Cauchon if he could eventually make it appear that these
were no saints to whom she had done reverence, but devils in disguise.
Now there was the matter of Joan's keeping her supernatural commerce a
secret from her parents. Much might be made of that. In fact, particular
emphasis had been given to it in a private remark written in the margin
of the proces: "She concealed her visions from her parents and from every
one." Possibly this disloyalty to her parents might itself be the sign of
the satanic source of her mission.
"Do you think it was right to go away to the wars without getting your
parents' leave? It is written one must honor his father and his mother."
"I have obeyed them in all things but that. And for that I have begged
their forgiveness in a letter and gotten it."
"Ah, you asked their pardon? So you knew you were guilty of sin in going
without their leave!"
Joan was stirred. Her eyes flashed, and she exclaimed:
"I was commanded of God, and it was right to go! If I had had a hundred
fathers and mothers and been a king's daughter to boot I would have
gone."
"Did you never ask your Voices if you might tell your parents?"
"They were willing that I should tell them, but I would not for anything
have given my parents that pain."
To the minds of the questioners this headstrong conduct savored of pride.
That sort of pride would move one to see sacrilegious adorations.
"Did not your Voices call you Daughter of God?"
Joan answered with simplicity, and unsuspiciously:
"Yes; before the siege of Orleans and since, they have several times
called me Daughter of God."
Further indications of pride and vanity were sought.
"What horse were you riding when you were captured? Who gave it you?"
"The King."
"You had other things--riches--of the King?"
"For myself I had horses and arms, and money to pay the service in my
household."
"Had you not a treasury?"
"Yes. Ten or twelve thousand crowns." Then she said with naivete "It was
not a great sum to carry on a war with."
"You have it yet?"
"No. It is the King's money. My brothers hold it for him."
"What were the arms which you left as an offering in the church of St.
Denis?"
"My suit of silver mail and a sword."
"Did you put them there in order that they might be adored?"
"No. It was but an act of devotion. And it is the custom of men of war
who have been wounded to make such offering there. I had been wounded
before Paris."
Nothing appealed to these stony hearts, those dull imaginations--not even
this pretty picture, so simply drawn, of the wounded girl-soldier hanging
her toy harness there in curious companionship with the grim and dusty
iron mail of the historic defenders of France. No, there was nothing in
it for them; nothing, unless evil and injury for that innocent creature
could be gotten out of it somehow.
"Which aided most--you the Standard, or the Standard you?"
"Whether it was the Standard or whether it was I, is nothing--the
victories came from God."
"But did you base your hopes of victory in yourself or in your Standard?"
"In neither. In God, and not otherwise."
"Was not your Standard waved around the King's head at the Coronation?"
"No. It was not."
"Why was it that your Standard had place at the crowning of the King in
the Cathedral of Rheims, rather than those of the other captains?"
Then, soft and low, came that touching speech which will live as long as
language lives, and pass into all tongues, and move all gentle hearts
wheresoever it shall come, down to the latest day:
"It had borne the burden, it had earned the honor." [1] How simple it is,
and how beautiful. And how it beggars the studies eloquence of the
masters of oratory. Eloquence was a native gift of Joan of Arc; it came
from her lips without effort and without preparation. Her words were as
sublime as her deeds, as sublime as her character; they had their source
in a great heart and were coined in a great brain.
[1] What she said has been many times translated, but never with success.
There is a haunting pathos about the original which eludes all efforts to
convey it into our tongue. It is as subtle as an odor, and escapes in the
transmission. Her words were these:
"Il avait ,t, a la peine, c'etait bien raison qu'il fut a l'honneur."
Monseigneur Ricard, Honorary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Aix,
finely speaks of it (Jeanne d'Arc la Venerable, page 197) as "that
sublime reply, enduring in the history of celebrated sayings like the cry
of a French and Christian soul wounded unto death in its patriotism and
its faith." -- TRANSLATOR.
12 Joan's Master-Stroke Diverted
NOW, as a next move, this small secret court of holy assassins did a
thing so base that even at this day, in my old age, it is hard to speak
of it with patience.
In the beginning of her commerce with her Voices there at Domremy, the
child Joan solemnly devoted her life to God, vowing her pure body and her
pure soul to His service. You will remember that her parents tried to
stop her from going to the wars by haling her to the court at Toul to
compel her to make a marriage which she had never promised to make--a
marriage with our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting, and most dear
and lamented comrade, the Standard-Bearer, who fell in honorable battle
and sleeps with God these sixty years, peace to his ashes! And you will
remember how Joan, sixteen years old, stood up in that venerable court
and conducted her case all by herself, and tore the poor Paladin's case
to rags and blew it away with a breath; and how the astonished old judge
on the bench spoke of her as "this marvelous child."
You remember all that. Then think what I felt, to see these false
priests, here in the tribunal wherein Joan had fought a fourth lone fight
in three years, deliberately twist that matter entirely around and try to
make out that Joan haled the Paladin into court and pretended that he had
promised to marry her, and was bent on making him do it.
Certainly there was no baseness that those people were ashamed to stoop
to in their hunt for that friendless girl's life. What they wanted to
show was this--that she had committed the sin of relapsing from her vow
and trying to violate it.
Joan detailed the true history of the case, but lost her temper as she
went along, and finished with some words for Cauchon which he remembers
yet, whether he is fanning himself in the world he belongs in or has
swindled his way into the other.
The rest of this day and part of the next the court labored upon the old
theme--the male attire. It was shabby work for those grave men to be
engaged in; for they well knew one of Joan's reasons for clinging to the
male dress was, that soldiers of the guard were always present in her
room whether she was asleep or awake, and that the male dress was a
better protection for her modesty than the other.
The court knew that one of Joan's purposes had been the deliverance of
the exiled Duke of Orleans, and they were curious to know how she had
intended to manage it. Her plan was characteristically businesslike, and
her statement of it as characteristically simple and straightforward:
"I would have taken English prisoners enough in France for his ransom;
and failing that, I would have invaded England and brought him out by
force."
That was just her way. If a thing was to be done, it was love first, and
hammer and tongs to follow; but no shilly-shallying between. She added
with a little sigh:
"If I had had my freedom three years, I would have delivered him."
"Have you the permission of your Voices to break out of prison whenever
you can?"
"I have asked their leave several times, but they have not given it."
I think it is as I have said, she expected the deliverance of death, and
within the prison walls, before the three months should expire.
"Would you escape if you saw the doors open?"
She spoke up frankly and said:
"Yes--for I should see in that the permission of Our Lord. God helps who
help themselves, the proverb says. But except I thought I had permission,
I would not go."
Now, then, at this point, something occurred which convinces me, every
time I think of it--and it struck me so at the time--that for a moment,
at least, her hopes wandered to the King, and put into her mind the same
notion about her deliverance which Noel and I had settled upon--a rescue
by her old soldiers. I think the idea of the rescue did occur to her, but
only as a passing thought, and that it quickly passed away.
Some remark of the Bishop of Beauvais moved her to remind him once more
that he was an unfair judge, and had no right to preside there, and that
he was putting himself in great danger.
"What danger?" he asked.
"I do not know. St. Catherine has promised me help, but I do not know the
form of it. I do not know whether I am to be delivered from this prison
or whether when you sent me to the scaffold there will happen a trouble
by which I shall be set free. Without much thought as to this matter, I
am of the opinion that it may be one or the other." After a pause she
added these words, memorable forever--words whose meaning she may have
miscaught, misunderstood; as to that we can never know; words which she
may have rightly understood, as to that, also, we can never know; but
words whose mystery fell away from them many a year ago and revealed
their meaning to all the world:
"But what my Voices have said clearest is, that I shall be delivered by a
great victory." She paused, my heart was beating fast, for to me that
great victory meant the sudden bursting in of our old soldiers with the
war-cry and clash of steel at the last moment and the carrying off of
Joan of Arc in triumph. But, oh, that thought had such a short life! For
now she raised her head and finished, with those solemn words which men
still so often quote and dwell upon--words which filled me with fear,
they sounded so like a prediction. "And always they say 'Submit to
whatever comes; do not grieve for your martyrdom; from it you will ascend
into the Kingdom of Paradise."
Was she thinking of fire and the stake? I think not. I thought of it
myself, but I believe she was only thinking of this slow and cruel
martyrdom of chains and captivity and insult. Surely, martyrdom was the
right name for it.
It was Jean de la Fontaine who was asking the questions. He was willing
to make the most he could out of what she had said:
"As the Voices have told you you are going to Paradise, you feel certain
that that will happen and that you will not be damned in hell. Is that
so?"
"I believe what they told me. I know that I shall be saved."
"It is a weighty answer."
"To me the knowledge that I shall be saved is a great treasure."
"Do you think that after that revelation you could be able to commit
mortal sin?"
"As to that, I do not know. My hope for salvation is in holding fast to
my oath to keep by body and my soul pure."
"Since you know you are to be saved, do you think it necessary to go to
confession?"
The snare was ingeniously devised, but Joan's simple and humble answer
left it empty:
"One cannot keep his conscience too clean."
We were now arriving at the last day of this new trial. Joan had come
through the ordeal well. It had been a long and wearisome struggle for
all concerned. All ways had been tried to convict the accused, and all
had failed, thus far. The inquisitors were thoroughly vexed and
dissatisfied.
However, they resolved to make one more effort, put in one more day's
work. This was done--March 17th. Early in the sitting a notable trap was
set for Joan:
"Will you submit to the determination of the Church all your words and
deeds, whether good or bad?"
That was well planned. Joan was in imminent peril now. If she should
heedlessly say yes, it would put her mission itself upon trial, and one
would know how to decide its source and character promptly. If she should
say no, she would render herself chargeable with the crime of heresy.
But she was equal to the occasion. She drew a distinct line of separation
between the Church's authority over her as a subject member, and the
matter of her mission. She said she loved the Church and was ready to
support the Christian faith with all her strength; but as to the works
done under her mission, those must be judged by God alone, who had
commanded them to be done.
The judge still insisted that she submit them to the decision of the
Church. She said:
"I will submit them to Our Lord who sent me. It would seem to me that He
and His Church are one, and that there should be no difficulty about this
matter." Then she turned upon the judge and said, "Why do you make a
difficulty when there is no room for any?"
Then Jean de la Fontaine corrected her notion that there was but one
Church. There were two--the Church Triumphant, which is God, the saints,
the angels, and the redeemed, and has its seat in heave; and the Church
Militant, which is our Holy Father the Pope, Vicar of God, the prelates,
the clergy and all good Christians and Catholics, the which Church has
its seat in the earth, is governed by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err.
"Will you not submit those matters to the Church Militant?"
"I am come to the King of France from the Church Triumphant on high by
its commandant, and to that Church I will submit all those things which I
have done. For the Church Militant I have no other answer now."
The court took note of this straitly worded refusal, and would hope to
get profit out of it; but the matter was dropped for the present, and a
long chase was then made over the old hunting-ground--the fairies, the
visions, the male attire, and all that.
In the afternoon the satanic Bishop himself took the chair and presided
over the closing scenes of the trial. Along toward the finish, this
question was asked by one of the judges:
"You have said to my lord the Bishop that you would answer him as you
would answer before our Holy Father the Pope, and yet there are several
questions which you continually refuse to answer. Would you not answer
the Pope more fully than you have answered before my lord of Beauvais?
Would you not feel obliged to answer the Pope, who is the Vicar of God,
more fully?"
Now a thunder-clap fell out of a clear sky:
"Take me to the Pope. I will answer to everything that I ought to."
It made the Bishop's purple face fairly blanch with consternation. If
Joan had only known, if she had only know! She had lodged a mine under
this black conspiracy able to blow the Bishop's schemes to the four winds
of heaven, and she didn't know it. She had made that speech by mere
instinct, not suspecting what tremendous forces were hidden in it, and
there was none to tell her what she had done. I knew, and Manchon knew;
and if she had known how to read writing we could have hoped to get the
knowledge to her somehow; but speech was the only way, and none was
allowed to approach her near enough for that. So there she sat, once more
Joan of Arc the Victorious, but all unconscious of it. She was miserably
worn and tired, by the long day's struggle and by illness, or she must
have noticed the effect of that speech and divined the reason of it.
She had made many master-strokes, but this was the master-stroke. It was
an appeal to Rome. It was her clear right; and if she had persisted in it
Cauchon's plot would have tumbled about his ears like a house of cards,
and he would have gone from that place the worst-beaten man of the
century. He was daring, but he was not daring enough to stand up against
that demand if Joan had urged it. But no, she was ignorant, poor thing,
and did not know what a blow she had struck for life and liberty.
France was not the Church. Rome had no interest in the destruction of
this messenger of God.
Rome would have given her a fair trial, and that was all that her cause
needed. From that trial she would have gone forth free, and honored, and
blessed.
But it was not so fated. Cauchon at once diverted the questions to other
matters and hurried the trial quickly to an end.
As Joan moved feebly away, dragging her chains, I felt stunned and dazed,
and kept saying to myself, "Such a little while ago she said the saving
word and could have gone free; and now, there she goes to her death; yes,
it is to her death, I know it, I feel it. They will double the guards;
they will never let any come near her now between this and her
condemnation, lest she get a hint and speak that word again. This is the
bitterest day that has come to me in all this miserable time."
13 The Third Trial Fails
SO THE SECOND trial in the prison was over. Over, and no definite result.
The character of it I have described to you. It was baser in one
particular than the previous one; for this time the charges had not been
communicated to Joan, therefore she had been obliged to fight in the
dark.
There was no opportunity to do any thinking beforehand; there was no
foreseeing what traps might be set, and no way to prepare for them. Truly
it was a shabby advantage to take of a girl situated as this one was. One
day, during the course of it, an able lawyer of Normandy, Maetre Lohier,
happened to be in Rouen, and I will give you his opinion of that trial,
so that you may see that I have been honest with you, and that my
partisanship has not made me deceive you as to its unfair and illegal
character. Cauchon showed Lohier the proces and asked his opinion about
the trial. Now this was the opinion which he gave to Cauchon. He said
that the whole thing was null and void; for these reasons: 1, because the
trial was secret, and full freedom of speech and action on the part of
those present not possible; 2, because the trial touched the honor of the
King of France, yet he was not summoned to defend himself, nor any one
appointed to represent him; 3, because the charges against the prisoner
were not communicated to her; 4, because the accused, although young and
simple, had been forced to defend her cause without help of counsel,
notwithstanding she had so much at stake.
Did that please Bishop Cauchon? It did not. He burst out upon Lohier with
the most savage cursings, and swore he would have him drowned. Lohier
escaped from Rouen and got out of France with all speed, and so saved his
life.
Well, as I have said, the second trial was over, without definite result.
But Cauchon did not give up. He could trump up another. And still another
and another, if necessary. He had the half-promise of an enormous
prize--the Archbishopric of Rouen--if he should succeed in burning the
body and damning to hell the soul of this young girl who had never done
him any harm; and such a prize as that, to a man like the Bishop of
Beauvais, was worth the burning and damning of fifty harmless girls, let
alone one.
So he set to work again straight off next day; and with high confidence,
too, intimating with brutal cheerfulness that he should succeed this
time. It took him and the other scavengers nine days to dig matter enough
out of Joan's testimony and their own inventions to build up the new mass
of charges. And it was a formidable mass indeed, for it numbered
sixty-six articles.
This huge document was carried to the castle the next day, March 27th;
and there, before a dozen carefully selected judges, the new trial was
begun.
Opinions were taken, and the tribunal decided that Joan should hear the
articles read this time.
Maybe that was on account of Lohier's remark upon that head; or maybe it
was hoped that the reading would kill the prisoner with fatigue--for, as
it turned out, this reading occupied several days. It was also decided
that Joan should be required to answer squarely to every article, and
that if she refused she should be considered convicted. You see, Cauchon
was managing to narrow her chances more and more all the time; he was
drawing the toils closer and closer.
Joan was brought in, and the Bishop of Beauvais opened with a speech to
her which ought to have made even himself blush, so laden it was with
hypocrisy and lies. He said that this court was composed of holy and
pious churchmen whose hearts were full of benevolence and compassion
toward her, and that they had no wish to hurt her body, but only a desire
to instruct her and lead her into the way of truth and salvation.
Why, this man was born a devil; now think of his describing himself and
those hardened slaves of his in such language as that.
And yet, worse was to come. For now having in mind another of Lovier's
hints, he had the cold effrontery to make to Joan a proposition which, I
think, will surprise you when you hear it. He said that this court,
recognizing her untaught estate and her inability to deal with the
complex and difficult matters which were about to be considered, had
determined, out of their pity and their mercifulness, to allow her to
choose one or more persons out of their own number to help her with
counsel and advice!
Think of that--a court made up of Loyseleur and his breed of reptiles. It
was granting leave to a lamb to ask help of a wolf. Joan looked up to see
if he was serious, and perceiving that he was at least pretending to be,
she declined, of course.
The Bishop was not expecting any other reply. He had made a show of
fairness and could have it entered on the minutes, therefore he was
satisfied.
Then he commanded Joan to answer straitly to every accusation; and
threatened to cut her off from the Church if she failed to do that or
delayed her answers beyond a given length of time.
Yes, he was narrowing her chances down, step by step.
Thomas de Courcelles began the reading of that interminable document,
article by article. Joan answered to each article in its turn; sometimes
merely denying its truth, sometimes by saying her answer would be found
in the records of the previous trials.
What a strange document that was, and what an exhibition and exposure of
the heart of man, the one creature authorized to boast that he is made in
the image of God. To know Joan of Arc was to know one who was wholly
noble, pure, truthful, brave, compassionate, generous, pious, unselfish,
modest, blameless as the very flowers in the fields--a nature fine and
beautiful, a character supremely great. To know her from that document
would be to know her as the exact reverse of all that. Nothing that she
was appears in it, everything that she was not appears there in detail.
Consider some of the things it charges against her, and remember who it
is it is speaking of. It calls her a sorceress, a false prophet, an
invoker and companion of evil spirits, a dealer in magic, a person
ignorant of the Catholic faith, a schismatic; she is sacrilegious, an
idolater, an apostate, a blasphemer of God and His saints, scandalous,
seditious, a disturber of the peace; she incites men to war, and to the
spilling of human blood; she discards the decencies and proprieties of
her sex, irreverently assuming the dress of a man and the vocation of a
soldier; she beguiles both princes and people; she usurps divine honors,
and has caused herself to be adored and venerated, offering her hands and
her vestments to be kissed.
There it is--every fact of her life distorted, perverted, reversed. As a
child she had loved the fairies, she had spoken a pitying word for them
when they were banished from their home, she had played under their tree
and around their fountain--hence she was a comrade of evil spirits.
She had lifted France out of the mud and moved her to strike for freedom,
and led her to victory after victory--hence she was a disturber of the
peace--as indeed she was, and a provoker of war--as indeed she was again!
and France will be proud of it and grateful for it for many a century to
come. And she had been adored--as if she could help that, poor thing, or
was in any way to blame for it. The cowed veteran and the wavering
recruit had drunk the spirit of war from her eyes and touched her sword
with theirs and moved forward invincible--hence she was a sorceress.
And so the document went on, detail by detail, turning these waters of
life to poison, this gold to dross, these proofs of a noble and beautiful
life to evidences of a foul and odious one.
Of course, the sixty-six articles were just a rehash of the things which
had come up in the course of the previous trials, so I will touch upon
this new trial but lightly. In fact, Joan went but little into detail
herself, usually merely saying, "That is not true--passez outre"; or, "I
have answered that before--let the clerk read it in his record," or
saying some other brief thing.
She refused to have her mission examined and tried by the earthly Church.
The refusal was taken note of.
She denied the accusation of idolatry and that she had sought men's
homage. She said:
"If any kissed my hands and my vestments it was not by my desire, and I
did what I could to prevent it."
She had the pluck to say to that deadly tribunal that she did not know
the fairies to be evil beings. She knew it was a perilous thing to say,
but it was not in her nature to speak anything but the truth when she
spoke at all. Danger had no weight with her in such things. Note was
taken of her remark.
She refused, as always before, when asked if she would put off the male
attire if she were given permission to commune. And she added this:
"When one receives the sacrament, the manner of his dress is a small
thing and of no value in the eyes of Our Lord."
She was charge with being so stubborn in clinging to her male dress that
she would not lay it off even to get the blessed privilege of hearing
mass. She spoke out with spirit and said:
"I would rather die than be untrue to my oath to God."
She was reproached with doing man's work in the wars and thus deserting
the industries proper to her sex. She answered, with some little touch of
soldierly disdain:
"As to the matter of women's work, there's plenty to do it."
It was always a comfort to me to see the soldier spirit crop up in her.
While that remained in her she would be Joan of Arc, and able to look
trouble and fate in the face.
"It appears that this mission of yours which you claim you had from God,
was to make war and pour out human blood."
Joan replied quite simply, contenting herself with explaining that war
was not her first move, but her second:
"To begin with, I demanded that peace should be made. If it was refused,
then I would fight."
The judge mixed the Burgundians and English together in speaking of the
enemy which Joan had come to make war upon. But she showed that she made
a distinction between them by act and word, the Burgundians being
Frenchmen and therefore entitled to less brusque treatment than the
English. She said:
"As to the Duke of Burgundy, I required of him, both by letters and by
his ambassadors, that he make peace with the King. As to the English, the
only peace for them was that they leave the country and go home."
Then she said that even with the English she had shown a pacific
disposition, since she had warned them away by proclamation before
attacking them.
"If they had listened to me," said she, "they would have done wisely." At
this point she uttered her prophecy again, saying with emphasis, "Before
seven years they will see it themselves."
Then they presently began to pester her again about her male costume, and
tried to persuade her to voluntarily promise to discard it. I was never
deep, so I think it no wonder that I was puzzled by their persistency in
what seemed a thing of no consequence, and could not make out what their
reason could be. But we all know now. We all know now that it was another
of their treacherous projects. Yes, if they could but succeed in getting
her to formally discard it they could play a game upon her which would
quickly destroy her. So they kept at their evil work until at last she
broke out and said:
"Peace! Without the permission of God I will not lay it off though you
cut off my head!"
At one point she corrected the proces verbal, saying:
"It makes me say that everything which I have done was done by the
counsel of Our Lord. I did not say that, I said 'all which I have well
done.'"
Doubt was cast upon the authenticity of her mission because of the
ignorance and simplicity of the messenger chosen. Joan smiled at that.
She could have reminded these people that Our Lord, who is no respecter
of persons, had chosen the lowly for his high purposes even oftener than
he had chosen bishops and cardinals; but she phrased her rebuke in
simpler terms:
"It is the prerogative of Our Lord to choose His instruments where He
will."
She was asked what form of prayer she used in invoking counsel from on
high. She said the form was brief and simple; then she lifted her pallid
face and repeated it, clasping her chained hands:
"Most dear God, in honor of your holy passion I beseech you, if you love
me, that you will reveal to me what I am to answer to these churchmen. As
concerns my dress, I know by what command I have put it on, but I know
not in what manner I am to lay it off. I pray you tell me what to do."
She was charged with having dared, against the precepts of God and His
saints, to assume empire over men and make herself Commander-in-Chief.
That touched the soldier in her. She had a deep reverence for priests,
but the soldier in her had but small reverence for a priest's opinions
about war; so, in her answer to this charge she did not condescend to go
into any explanations or excuses, but delivered herself with bland
indifference and military brevity.
"If I was Commander-in-Chief, it was to thrash the English."
Death was staring her in the face here all the time, but no matter; she
dearly loved to make these English-hearted Frenchmen squirm, and whenever
they gave her an opening she was prompt to jab her sting into it. She got
great refreshment out of these little episodes. Her days were a desert;
these were the oases in it.
Her being in the wars with men was charged against her as an indelicacy.
She said:
"I had a woman with me when I could--in towns and lodgings. In the field
I always slept in my armor."
That she and her family had been ennobled by the King was charged against
her as evidence that the source of her deeds were sordid self-seeking.
She answered that she had not asked this grace of the King; it was his
own act.
This third trial was ended at last. And once again there was no definite
result.
Possibly a fourth trial might succeed in defeating this apparently
unconquerable girl. So the malignant Bishop set himself to work to plan
it.
He appointed a commission to reduce the substance of the sixty-six
articles to twelve compact lies, as a basis for the new attempt. This was
done. It took several days.
Meantime Cauchon went to Joan's cell one day, with Manchon and two of the
judges, Isambard de la Pierre and Martin Ladvenue, to see if he could not
manage somehow to beguile Joan into submitting her mission to the
examination and decision of the Church Militant--that is to say, to that
part of the Church Militant which was represented by himself and his
creatures.
Joan once more positively refused. Isambard de la Pierre had a heart in
his body, and he so pitied this persecuted poor girl that he ventured to
do a very daring thing; for he asked her if she would be willing to have
her case go before the Council of Basel, and said it contained as many
priests of her party as of the English party.
Joan cried out that she would gladly go before so fairly constructed a
tribunal as that; but before Isambard could say another word Cauchon
turned savagely upon him and exclaimed:
"Shut up, in the devil's name!"
Then Manchon ventured to do a brave thing, too, though he did it in great
fear for his life. He asked Cauchon if he should enter Joan's submission
to the Council of Basel upon the minutes.
"No! It is not necessary."
"Ah," said poor Joan, reproachfully, "you set down everything that is
against me, but you will not set down what is for me."
It was piteous. It would have touched the heart of a brute. But Cauchon
was more than that.
14 Joan Struggles with Her Twelve Lies
WE WERE now in the first days of April. Joan was ill. She had fallen ill
the 29th of March, the day after the close of the third trial, and was
growing worse when the scene which I have just described occurred in her
cell. It was just like Cauchon to go there and try to get some advantage
out of her weakened state.
Let us note some of the particulars in the new indictment--the Twelve
Lies.
Part of the first one says Joan asserts that she has found her salvation.
She never said anything of the kind. It also says she refuses to submit
herself to the Church. Not true. She was willing to submit all her acts
to this Rouen tribunal except those done by the command of God in
fulfilment of her mission. Those she reserved for the judgment of God.
She refused to recognize Cauchon and his serfs as the Church, but was
willing to go before the Pope or the Council of Basel.
A clause of another of the Twelve says she admits having threatened with
death those who would not obey her. Distinctly false. Another clause says
she declares that all she has done has been done by command of God. What
she really said was, all that she had done well--a correction made by
herself as you have already seen.
Another of the Twelve says she claims that she has never committed any
sin. She never made any such claim.
Another makes the wearing of the male dress a sin. If it was, she had
high Catholic authority for committing it--that of the Archbishop of
Rheims and the tribunal of Poitiers.
The Tenth Article was resentful against her for "pretending" that St.
Catherine and St.
Marguerite spoke French and not English, and were French in their
politics.
The Twelve were to be submitted first to the learned doctors of theology
of the University of Paris for approval. They were copied out and ready
by the night of April 4th. Then Manchon did another bold thing: he wrote
in the margin that many of the Twelve put statements in Joan's mouth
which were the exact opposite of what she had said. That fact would not
be considered important by the University of Paris, and would not
influence its decision or stir its humanity, in case it had any--which it
hadn't when acting in a political capacity, as at present--but it was a
brave thing for that good Manchon to do, all the same.
The Twelve were sent to Paris next day, April 5th. That afternoon there
was a great tumult in Rouen, and excited crowds were flocking through all
the chief streets, chattering and seeking for news; for a report had gone
abroad that Joan of Arc was sick until death. In truth, these long
seances had worn her out, and she was ill indeed. The heads of the
English party were in a state of consternation; for if Joan should die
uncondemned by the Church and go to the grave unsmirched, the pity and
the love of the people would turn her wrongs and sufferings and death
into a holy martyrdom, and she would be even a mightier power in France
dead than she had been when alive.
The Earl of Warwick and the English Cardinal (Winchester) hurried to the
castle and sent messengers flying for physicians. Warwick was a hard man,
a rude, coarse man, a man without compassion. There lay the sick girl
stretched in her chains in her iron cage--not an object to move man to
ungentle speech, one would think; yet Warwick spoke right out in her
hearing and said to the physicians:
"Mind you take good care of her. The King of England has no mind to have
her die a natural death. She is dear to him, for he bought her dear, and
he does not want her to die, save at the stake. Now then, mind you cure
her."
The doctors asked Joan what had made her ill. She said the Bishop of
Beauvais had sent her a fish and she thought it was that.
Then Jean d'Estivet burst out on her, and called her names and abused
her. He understood Joan to be charging the Bishop with poisoning her, you
see; and that was not pleasing to him, for he was one of Cauchon's most
loving and conscienceless slaves, and it outraged him to have Joan injure
his master in the eyes of these great English chiefs, these being men who
could ruin Cauchon and would promptly do it if they got the conviction
that he was capable of saving Joan from the stake by poisoning her and
thus cheating the English out of all the real value gainable by her
purchase from the Duke of Burgundy.
Joan had a high fever, and the doctors proposed to bleed her. Warwick
said:
"Be careful about that; she is smart and is capable of killing herself."
He meant that to escape the stake she might undo the bandage and let
herself bleed to death.
But the doctors bled her anyway, and then she was better.
Not for long, though. Jean d'Estivet could not hold still, he was so
worried and angry about the suspicion of poisoning which Joan had hinted
at; so he came back in the evening and stormed at her till he brought the
fever all back again.
When Warwick heard of this he was in a fine temper, you may be sure, for
here was his prey threatening to escape again, and all through the
over-zeal of this meddling fool. Warwick gave D'Estivet a quite admirable
cursing--admirable as to strength, I mean, for it was said by persons of
culture that the art of it was not good--and after that the meddler kept
still.
Joan remained ill more than two weeks; then she grew better. She was
still very weak, but she could bear a little persecution now without much
danger to her life. It seemed to Cauchon a good time to furnish it. So he
called together some of his doctors of theology and went to her dungeon.
Manchon and I went along to keep the record--that is, to set down what
might be useful to Cauchon, and leave out the rest.
The sight of Joan gave me a shock. Why, she was but a shadow! It was
difficult for me to realize that this frail little creature with the sad
face and drooping form was the same Joan of Arc that I had so often seen,
all fire and enthusiasm, charging through a hail of death and the
lightning and thunder of the guns at the head of her battalions. It wrung
my heart to see her looking like this.
But Cauchon was not touched. He made another of those conscienceless
speeches of his, all dripping with hypocrisy and guile. He told Joan that
among her answers had been some which had seemed to endanger religion;
and as she was ignorant and without knowledge of the Scriptures, he had
brought some good and wise men to instruct her, if she desired it. Said
he, "We are churchmen, and disposed by our good will as well as by our
vocation to procure for you the salvation of your soul and your body, in
every way in our power, just as we would do the like for our nearest kin
or for ourselves. In this we but follow the example of Holy Church, who
never closes the refuge of her bosom against any that are willing to
return."
Joan thanked him for these sayings and said:
"I seem to be in danger of death from this malady; if it be the pleasure
of God that I die here, I beg that I may be heard in confession and also
receive my Saviour; and that I may be buried in consecrated ground."
Cauchon thought he saw his opportunity at last; this weakened body had
the fear of an unblessed death before it and the pains of hell to follow.
This stubborn spirit would surrender now. So he spoke out and said:
"Then if you want the Sacraments, you must do as all good Catholics do,
and submit to the Church."
He was eager for her answer; but when it came there was no surrender in
it, she still stood to her guns. She turned her head away and said
wearily:
"I have nothing more to say."
Cauchon's temper was stirred, and he raised his voice threateningly and
said that the more she was in danger of death the more she ought to amend
her life; and again he refused the things she begged for unless she would
submit to the Church. Joan said:
"If I die in this prison I beg you to have me buried in holy ground; if
you will not, I cast myself upon my Saviour."
There was some more conversation of the like sort, then Cauchon demanded
again, and imperiously, that she submit herself and all her deeds to the
Church. His threatening and storming went for nothing. That body was
weak, but the spirit in it was the spirit of Joan of Arc; and out of that
came the steadfast answer which these people were already so familiar
with and detested so sincerely:
"Let come what may. I will neither do nor say any otherwise than I have
said already in your tribunals."
Then the good theologians took turn about and worried her with reasonings
and arguments and Scriptures; and always they held the lure of the
Sacraments before her famishing soul, and tried to bribe her with them to
surrender her mission to the Church's judgment--that is to their
judgment--as if they were the Church! But it availed nothing. I could
have told them that beforehand, if they had asked me. But they never
asked me anything; I was too humble a creature for their notice.
Then the interview closed with a threat; a threat of fearful import; a
threat calculated to make a Catholic Christian feel as if the ground were
sinking from under him:
"The Church calls upon you to submit; disobey, and she will abandon you
as if you were a pagan!"
Think of being abandoned by the Church!--that August Power in whose hands
is lodged the fate of the human race; whose scepter stretches beyond the
furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky; whose authority is over
millions that live and over the billions that wait trembling in purgatory
for ransom or doom; whose smile opens the gates of heaven to you, whose
frown delivers you to the fires of everlasting hell; a Power whose
dominion overshadows and belittles the pomps and shows of a village. To
be abandoned by one's King--yes, that is death, and death is much; but to
be abandoned by Rome, to be abandoned by the Church! Ah, death is nothing
to that, for that is consignment to endless life--and such a life!
I could see the red waves tossing in that shoreless lake of fire, I could
see the black myriads of the damned rise out of them and struggle and
sink and rise again; and I knew that Joan was seeing what I saw, while
she paused musing; and I believed that she must yield now, and in truth I
hoped she would, for these men were able to make the threat good and
deliver her over to eternal suffering, and I knew that it was in their
natures to do it.
But I was foolish to think that thought and hope that hope. Joan of Arc
was not made as others are made. Fidelity to principle, fidelity to
truth, fidelity to her word, all these were in her bone and in her
flesh--they were parts of her. She could not change, she could not cast
them out. She was the very genius of Fidelity; she was Steadfastness
incarnated. Where she had taken her stand and planted her foot, there she
would abide; hell itself could not move her from that place.
Her Voices had not given her permission to make the sort of submission
that was required, therefore she would stand fast. She would wait, in
perfect obedience, let come what might.
My heart was like lead in my body when I went out from that dungeon; but
she--she was serene, she was not troubled. She had done what she believed
to be her duty, and that was sufficient; the consequences were not her
affair. The last thing she said that time was full of this serenity, full
of contented repose:
"I am a good Christian born and baptized, and a good Christian I will
die."
15 Undaunted by Threat of Burning
TWO WEEKS went by; the second of May was come, the chill was departed out
of the air, the wild flowers were springing in the glades and glens, the
birds were piping in the woods, all nature was brilliant with sunshine,
all spirits were renewed and refreshed, all hearts glad, the world was
alive with hope and cheer, the plain beyond the Seine stretched away soft
and rich and green, the river was limpid and lovely, the leafy islands
were dainty to see, and flung still daintier reflections of themselves
upon the shining water; and from the tall bluffs above the bridge Rouen
was become again a delight to the eye, the most exquisite and satisfying
picture of a town that nestles under the arch of heaven anywhere.
When I say that all hearts were glad and hopeful, I mean it in a general
sense. There were exceptions--we who were the friends of Joan of Arc,
also Joan of Arc herself, that poor girl shut up there in that frowning
stretch of mighty walls and towers: brooding in darkness, so close to the
flooding downpour of sunshine yet so impossibly far away from it; so
longing for any little glimpse of it, yet so implacably denied it by
those wolves in the black gowns who were plotting her death and the
blackening of her good name.
Cauchon was ready to go on with his miserable work. He had a new scheme
to try now. He would see what persuasion could do--argument, eloquence,
poured out upon the incorrigible captive from the mouth of a trained
expert. That was his plan. But the reading of the Twelve Articles to her
was not a part of it. No, even Cauchon was ashamed to lay that
monstrosity before her; even he had a remnant of shame in him, away down
deep, a million fathoms deep, and that remnant asserted itself now and
prevailed.
On this fair second of May, then, the black company gathered itself
together in the spacious chamber at the end of the great hall of the
castle--the Bishop of Beauvais on his throne, and sixty-two minor judges
massed before him, with the guards and recorders at their stations and
the orator at his desk.
Then we heard the far clank of chains, and presently Joan entered with
her keepers and took her seat upon her isolated bench. She was looking
well now, and most fair and beautiful after her fortnight's rest from
wordy persecution.
She glanced about and noted the orator. Doubtless she divined the
situation.
The orator had written his speech all out, and had it in his hand, though
he held it back of him out of sight. It was so thick that it resembled a
book. He began flowing, but in the midst of a flowery period his memory
failed him and he had to snatch a furtive glance at his manuscript--which
much injured the effect. Again this happened, and then a third time. The
poor man's face was red with embarrassment, the whole great house was
pitying him, which made the matter worse; then Joan dropped in a remark
which completed the trouble. She said:
"Read your book--and then I will answer you!"
Why, it was almost cruel the way those moldy veterans laughed; and as for
the orator, he looked so flustered and helpless that almost anybody would
have pitied him, and I had difficulty to keep from doing it myself. Yes,
Joan was feeling very well after her rest, and the native mischief that
was in her lay near the surface. It did not show when she made the
remark, but I knew it was close in there back of the words.
When the orator had gotten back his composure he did a wise thing; for he
followed Joan's advice: he made no more attempts at sham impromptu
oratory, but read his speech straight from his "book." In the speech he
compressed the Twelve Articles into six, and made these his text.
Every now and then he stopped and asked questions, and Joan replied. The
nature of the Church Militant was explained, and once more Joan was asked
to submit herself to it.
She gave her usual answer.
Then she was asked:
"Do you believe the Church can err?"
"I believe it cannot err; but for those deeds and words of mine which
were done and uttered by command of God, I will answer to Him alone."
"Will you say that you have no judge upon earth? Is not our Holy Father
the Pope your judge?"
"I will say nothing about it. I have a good Master who is our Lord, and
to Him I will submit all."
Then came these terrible words:
"If you do not submit to the Church you will be pronounced a heretic by
these judges here present and burned at the stake!"
Ah, that would have smitten you or me dead with fright, but it only
roused the lion heart of Joan of Arc, and in her answer rang that martial
note which had used to stir her soldiers like a bugle-call:
"I will not say otherwise than I have said already; and if I saw the fire
before me I would say it again!"
It was uplifting to hear her battle-voice once more and see the
battle-light burn in her eye. Many there were stirred; every man that was
a man was stirred, whether friend or foe; and Manchon risked his life
again, good soul, for he wrote in the margin of the record in good plain
letters these brave words: "Superba responsio!" and there they have
remained these sixty years, and there you may read them to this day.
"Superba responsio!" Yes, it was just that. For this "superb answer" came
from the lips of a girl of nineteen with death and hell staring her in
the face.
Of course, the matter of the male attire was gone over again; and as
usual at wearisome length; also, as usual, the customary bribe was
offered: if she would discard that dress voluntarily they would let her
hear mass. But she answered as she had often answered before:
"I will go in a woman's robe to all services of the Church if I may be
permitted, but I will resume the other dress when I return to my cell."
They set several traps for her in a tentative form; that is to say, they
placed suppositious propositions before her and cunningly tried to commit
her to one end of the propositions without committing themselves to the
other. But she always saw the game and spoiled it. The trap was in this
form:
"Would you be willing to do so and so if we should give you leave?"
Her answer was always in this form or to this effect:
"When you give me leave, then you will know."
Yes, Joan was at her best that second of May. She had all her wits about
her, and they could not catch her anywhere. It was a long, long session,
and all the old ground was fought over again, foot by foot, and the
orator-expert worked all his persuasions, all his eloquence; but the
result was the familiar one--a drawn battle, the sixty-two retiring upon
their base, the solitary enemy holding her original position within her
original lines.
16 Joan Stands Defiant Before the Rack
THE BRILLIANT weather, the heavenly weather, the bewitching weather made
everybody's heart to sing, as I have told you; yes, Rouen was feeling
light-hearted and gay, and most willing and ready to break out and laugh
upon the least occasion; and so when the news went around that the young
girl in the tower had scored another defeat against Bishop Cauchon there
was abundant laughter--abundant laughter among the citizens of both
parties, for they all hated the Bishop. It is true, the English-hearted
majority of the people wanted Joan burned, but that did not keep them
from laughing at the man they hated. It would have been perilous for
anybody to laugh at the English chiefs or at the majority of Cauchon's
assistant judges, but to laugh at Cauchon or D'Estivet and Loyseleur was
safe--nobody would report it.
The difference between Cauchon and cochon [1] was not noticeable in
speech, and so there was plenty of opportunity for puns; the
opportunities were not thrown away.
Some of the jokes got well worn in the course of two or three months,
from repeated use; for every time Cauchon started a new trial the folk
said "The sow has littered [2] again"; and every time the trial failed
they said it over again, with its other meaning, "The hog has made a mess
of it."
And so, on the third of May, Noel and I, drifting about the town, heard
many a wide-mouthed lout let go his joke and his laugh, and then move tot
he next group, proud of his wit and happy, to work it off again:
"'Od's blood, the sow has littered five times, and five times has made a
mess of it!"
And now and then one was bold enough to say--but he said it softly:
"Sixty-three and the might of England against a girl, and she camps on
the field five times!"
Cauchon lived in the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was guarded
by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark night but the
walls showed next morning that the rude joker had been there with his
paint and brush. Yes, he had been thee, and had smeared the sacred walls
with pictures of hogs in all attitudes except flattering ones; hogs
clothed in a Bishop's vestments and wearing a Bishop's miter irreverently
cocked on the side of their heads.
Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence during seven
says; then he conceived a new scheme. You shall see what it was; for you
have not cruel hearts, and you would never guess it.
On the ninth of May there was a summons, and Manchon and I got out
materials together and started. But this time we were to go to one of the
other towers--not the one which was Joan's prison. It was round and grim
and massive, and built of the plainest and thickest and solidest
masonry--a dismal and forbidding structure. [3] We entered the circular
room on the ground floor, and I saw what turned me sick--the instruments
of torture and the executioners standing ready! Here you have the black
heart of Cauchon at the blackest, here you have the proof that in his
nature there was no such thing as pity. One wonders if he ever knew his
mother or ever had a sister.
Cauchon was there, and the Vice-Inquisitor and the Abbot of St.
Corneille; also six others, among them that false Loyseleur. The guards
were in their places, the rack was there, and by it stood the executioner
and his aids in their crimson hose and doublets, meet color for their
bloody trade. The picture of Joan rose before me stretched upon the rack,
her feet tied to one end of it, her wrists to the other, and those red
giants turning the windlass and pulling her limbs out of their sockets.
It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear
apart, and I did not see how that body of anointed servants of the
merciful Jesus could sit there and look so placid and indifferent.
After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack, she
saw the attendants, and the same picture which I had been seeing must
have risen in her mind; but do you think she quailed, do you think she
shuddered? No, there was no sign of that sort. She straightened herself
up, and there was a slight curl of scorn about her lip; but as for fear,
she showed not a vestige of it.
This was a memorable session, but it was the shortest one of all the
list. When Joan had taken her seat a r,sum, of her "crimes" was read to
her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. It in he said that in the course
of her several trials Joan had refused to answer some of the questions
and had answered others with lies, but that now he was going to have the
truth out of her, and the whole of it.
Her manner was full of confidence this time; he was sure he had found a
way at last to break this child's stubborn spirit and make her beg and
cry. He would score a victory this time and stop the mouths of the jokers
of Rouen. You see, he was only just a man after all, and couldn't stand
ridicule any better than other people. He talked high, and his splotchy
face lighted itself up with all the shifting tints and signs of evil
pleasure and promised triumph--purple, yellow, red, green--they were all
there, with sometimes the dull and spongy blue of a drowned man, the
uncanniest of them all. And finally he burst out in a great passion and
said:
"There is the rack, and there are its ministers! You will reveal all now
or be put to the torture.
"Speak."
Then she made that great answer which will live forever; made it without
fuss or bravado, and yet how fine and noble was the sound of it:
"I will tell you nothing more than I have told you; no, not even if you
tear the limbs from my body. And even if in my pain I did say something
otherwise, I would always say afterward that it was the torture that
spoke and not I."
There was no crushing that spirit. You should have seen Cauchon. Defeated
again, and he had not dreamed of such a thing. I heard it said the next
day, around the town, that he had a full confession all written out, in
his pocket and all ready for Joan to sign. I do not know that that was
true, but it probably was, for her mark signed at the bottom of a
confession would be the kind of evidence (for effect with the public)
which Cauchon and his people were particularly value, you know.
No, there was no crushing that spirit, and no beclouding that clear mind.
Consider the depth, the wisdom of that answer, coming from an ignorant
girl. Why, there were not six men in the world who had ever reflected
that words forced out of a person by horrible tortures were not
necessarily words of verity and truth, yet this unlettered peasant-girl
put her finger upon that flaw with an unerring instinct. I had always
supposed that torture brought out the truth--everybody supposed it; and
when Joan came out with those simple common-sense words they seemed to
flood the place with light. It was like a lightning-flash at midnight
which suddenly reveals a fair valley sprinkled over with silver streams
and gleaming villages and farmsteads where was only an impenetrable world
of darkness before. Manchon stole a sidewise look at me, and his face was
full of surprise; and there was the like to be seen in other faces there.
Consider--they were old, and deeply cultured, yet here was a village maid
able to teach them something which they had not known before. I heard one
of them mutter:
"Verily it is a wonderful creature. She has laid her hand upon an
accepted truth that is as old as the world, and it has crumbled to dust
and rubbish under her touch. Now whence got she that marvelous insight?"
The judges laid their heads together and began to talk now. It was plain,
from chance words which one caught now and then, that Cauchon and
Loyseleur were insisting upon the application of the torture, and that
most of the others were urgently objecting.
Finally Cauchon broke out with a good deal of asperity in his voice and
ordered Joan back to her dungeon. That was a happy surprise for me. I was
not expecting that the Bishop would yield.
When Manchon came home that night he said he had found out why the
torture was not applied.
There were two reasons. One was, a fear that Joan might die under the
torture, which would not suit the English at all; the other was, that the
torture would effect nothing if Joan was going to take back everything
she said under its pains; and as to putting her mark to a confession, it
was believed that not even the rack would ever make her do that.
So all Rouen laughed again, and kept it up for three days, saying:
"The sow has littered six times, and made six messes of it."
And the palace walls got a new decoration--a mitered hog carrying a
discarded rack home on its shoulder, and Loyseleur weeping in its wake.
Many rewards were offered for the capture of these painters, but nobody
applied. Even the English guard feigned blindness and would not see the
artists at work.
The Bishop's anger was very high now. He could not reconcile himself to
the idea of giving up the torture. It was the pleasantest idea he had
invented yet, and he would not cast it by. So he called in some of his
satellites on the twelfth, and urged the torture again. But it was a
failure.
With some, Joan's speech had wrought an effect; others feared she might
die under torture; others did not believe that any amount of suffering
could make her put her mark to a lying confession. There were fourteen
men present, including the Bishop. Eleven of them voted dead against the
torture, and stood their ground in spite of Cauchon's abuse. Two voted
with the Bishop and insisted upon the torture. These two were Loyseleur
and the orator--the man whom Joan had bidden to "read his book"--Thomas
de Courcelles, the renowned pleader and master of eloquence.
Age has taught me charity of speech; but it fails me when I think of
those three names--Cauchon, Courcelles, Loyseleur.
[1] Hog, pig.
[2] Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, "to make a mess of"!
[3] The lower half of it remains to-day just as it was then; the upper
half is of a later date. -- TRANSLATOR.
17 Supreme in Direst Peril
ANOTHER ten days' wait. The great theologians of that treasury of all
valuable knowledge and all wisdom, the University of Paris, were still
weighing and considering and discussing the Twelve Lies.
I had had but little to do these ten days, so I spent them mainly in
walks about the town with Noel. But there was no pleasure in them, our
spirits being so burdened with cares, and the outlook for Joan growing
steadily darker and darker all the time. And then we naturally contrasted
our circumstances with hers: this freedom and sunshine, with her darkness
and chains; our comradeship, with her lonely estate; our alleviations of
one sort and another, with her destitution in all. She was used to
liberty, but now she had none; she was an out-of-door creature by nature
and habit, but now she was shut up day and night in a steel cage like an
animal; she was used to the light, but now she was always in a gloom
where all objects about her were dim and spectral; she was used to the
thousand various sounds which are the cheer and music of a busy life, but
now she heard only the monotonous footfall of the sentry pacing his
watch; she had been fond of talking with her mates, but now there was no
one to talk to; she had had an easy laugh, but it was gone dumb now; she
had been born for comradeship, and blithe and busy work, and all manner
of joyous activities, but here were only dreariness, and leaden hours,
and weary inaction, and brooding stillness, and thoughts that travel by
day and night and night and day round and round in the same circle, and
wear the brain and break the heart with weariness. It was death in life;
yes, death in life, that is what it must have been. And there was another
hard thing about it all. A young girl in trouble needs the soothing
solace and support and sympathy of persons of her own sex, and the
delicate offices and gentle ministries which only these can furnish; yet
in all these months of gloomy captivity in her dungeon Joan never saw the
face of a girl or a woman. Think how her heart would have leaped to see
such a face.
Consider. If you would realize how great Joan of Arc was, remember that
it was out of such a place and such circumstances that she came week
after week and month after month and confronted the master intellects of
France single-handed, and baffled their cunningest schemes, defeated
their ablest plans, detected and avoided their secretest traps and
pitfalls, broke their lines, repelled their assaults, and camped on the
field after every engagement; steadfast always, true to her faith and her
ideals; defying torture, defying the stake, and answering threats of
eternal death and the pains of hell with a simple "Let come what may,
here I take my stand and will abide."
Yes, if you would realize how great was the soul, how profound the
wisdom, and how luminous the intellect of Joan of Arc, you must study her
there, where she fought out that long fight all alone--and not merely
against the subtlest brains and deepest learning of France, but against
the ignoble deceits, the meanest treacheries, and the hardest hearts to
be found in any land, pagan or Christian.
She was great in battle--we all know that; great in foresight; great in
loyalty and patriotism; great in persuading discontented chiefs and
reconciling conflicting interests and passions; great in the ability to
discover merit and genius wherever it lay hidden; great in picturesque
and eloquent speech; supremely great in the gift of firing the hearts of
hopeless men and noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into
heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with
songs on their lips. But all these are exalting activities; they keep
hand and heart and brain keyed up to their work; there is the joy of
achievement, the inspiration of stir and movement, the applause which
hails success; the soul is overflowing with life and energy, the
faculties are at white heat; weariness, despondency, inertia--these do
not exist.
Yes, Joan of Arc was great always, great everywhere, but she was greatest
in the Rouen trials.
There she rose above the limitations and infirmities of our human nature,
and accomplished under blighting and unnerving and hopeless conditions
all that her splendid equipment of moral and intellectual forces could
have accomplished if they had been supplemented by the mighty helps of
hope and cheer and light, the presence of friendly faces, and a fair and
equal fight, with the great world looking on and wondering.
18 Condemned Yet Unafraid
TOWARD THE END of the ten-day interval the University of Paris rendered
its decision concerning the Twelve Articles. By this finding, Joan was
guilty upon all the counts: she must renounce her errors and make
satisfaction, or be abandoned to the secular arm for punishment.
The University's mind was probably already made up before the Articles
were laid before it; yet it took it from the fifth to the eighteenth to
produce its verdict. I think the delay may have been caused by temporary
difficulties concerning two points:
1. As to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan's Voices; 2. As
to whether her saints spoke French only.
You understand, the University decided emphatically that it was fiends
who spoke in those Voices; it would need to prove that, and it did. It
found out who those fiends were, and named them in the verdict: Belial,
Satan, and Behemoth. This has always seemed a doubtful thing to me, and
not entitled to much credit. I think so for this reason: if the
University had actually known it was those three, it would for very
consistency's sake have told how it knew it, and not stopped with the
mere assertion, since it had made Joan explain how she knew they were not
fiends. Does not that seem reasonable? To my mind the University's
position was weak, and I will tell you why. It had claimed that Joan's
angels were devils in disguise, and we all know that devils do disguise
themselves as angels; up to that point the University's position was
strong; but you see yourself that it eats its own argument when it turns
around and pretends that it can tell who such apparitions are, while
denying the like ability to a person with as good a head on her shoulders
as the best one the University could produce.
The doctors of the University had to see those creatures in order to
know; and if Joan was deceived, it is argument that they in their turn
could also be deceived, for their insight and judgment were surely not
clearer than hers.
As to the other point which I have thought may have proved a difficulty
and cost the University delay, I will touch but a moment upon that, and
pass on. The University decided that it was blasphemy for Joan to say
that her saints spoke French and not English, and were on the French side
in political sympathies. I think that the thing which troubled the
doctors of theology was this: they had decided that the three Voices were
Satan and two other devils; but they had also decided that these Voices
were not on the French side--thereby tacitly asserting that they were on
the English side; and if on the English side, then they must be angels
and not devils. Otherwise, the situation was embarrassing. You see, the
University being the wisest and deepest and most erudite body in the
world, it would like to be logical if it could, for the sake of its
reputation; therefore it would study and study, days and days, trying to
find some good common-sense reason for proving the Voices to be devils in
Article No. 1 and proving them to be angels in Article No. 10. However,
they had to give it up. They found no way out; and so, to this day, the
University's verdict remains just so--devils in No. 1, angels in No. 10;
and no way to reconcile the discrepancy.
The envoys brought the verdict to Rouen, and with it a letter for Cauchon
which was full of fervid praise. The University complimented him on his
zeal in hunting down this woman "whose venom had infected the faithful of
the whole West," and as recompense it as good as promised him "a crown of
imperishable glory in heaven." Only that!--a crown in heaven; a
promissory note and no indorser; always something away off yonder; not a
word about the Archbishopric of Rouen, which was the thing Cauchon was
destroying his soul for. A crown in heaven; it must have sounded like a
sarcasm to him, after all his hard work. What should he do in heaven? he
did not know anybody there.
On the nineteenth of May a court of fifty judges sat in the
archiepiscopal palace to discuss Joan's fate. A few wanted her delivered
over to the secular arm at once for punishment, but the rest insisted
that she be once more "charitably admonished" first.
So the same court met in the castle on the twenty-third, and Joan was
brought to the bar. Pierre Maurice, a canon of Rouen, made a speech to
Joan in which he admonished her to save her life and her soul by
renouncing her errors and surrendering to the Church. He finished with a
stern threat: if she remained obstinate the damnation of her soul was
certain, the destruction of her body probable. But Joan was immovable.
She said:
"If I were under sentence, and saw the fire before me, and the
executioner ready to light it--more, if I were in the fire itself, I
would say none but the things which I have said in these trials; and I
would abide by them till I died."
A deep silence followed now, which endured some moments. It lay upon me
like a weight. I knew it for an omen. Then Cauchon, grave and solemn,
turned to Pierre Maurice:
"Have you anything further to say?"
The priest bowed low, and said:
"Nothing, my lord."
"Prisoner at the bar, have you anything further to say?"
"Nothing."
"Then the debate is closed. To-morrow, sentence will be pronounced.
Remove the prisoner."
She seemed to go from the place erect and noble. But I do not know; my
sight was dim with tears.
To-morrow--twenty-fourth of May! Exactly a year since I saw her go
speeding across the plain at the head of her troops, her silver helmet
shining, her silvery cape fluttering in the wind, her white plumes
flowing, her sword held aloft; saw her charge the Burgundian camp three
times, and carry it; saw her wheel to the right and spur for the duke's
reserves; saws her fling herself against it in the last assault she was
ever to make. And now that fatal day was come again--and see what it was
bringing!
19 Our Last Hopes of Rescue Fail
JOAN HAD been adjudged guilty of heresy, sorcery, and all the other
terrible crimes set forth in the Twelve Articles, and her life was in
Cauchon's hands at last. He could send her to the stake at once. His work
was finished now, you think? He was satisfied? Not at all. What would his
Archbishopric be worth if the people should get the idea into their heads
that this faction of interested priests, slaving under the English lash,
had wrongly condemned and burned Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France? That
would be to make of her a holy martyr. Then her spirit would rise from
her body's ashes, a thousandfold reinforced, and sweep the English
domination into the sea, and Cauchon along with it. No, the victory was
not complete yet. Joan's guilt must be established by evidence which
would satisfy the people. Where was that evidence to be found? There was
only one person in the world who could furnish it--Joan of Arc herself.
She must condemn herself, and in public--at least she must seem to do it.
But how was this to be managed? Weeks had been spent already in trying to
get her to surrender--time wholly wasted; what was to persuade her now?
Torture had been threatened, the fire had been threatened; what was left?
Illness, deadly fatigue, and the sight of the fire, the presence of the
fire! That was left.
Now that was a shrewd thought. She was but a girl after all, and, under
illness and exhaustion, subject to a girl's weaknesses.
Yes, it was shrewdly thought. She had tacitly said herself that under the
bitter pains of the rack they would be able to extort a false confession
from her. It was a hint worth remembering, and it was remembered.
She had furnished another hint at the same time: that as soon as the
pains were gone, she would retract the confession. That hint was also
remembered.
She had herself taught them what to do, you see. First, they must wear
out her strength, then frighten her with the fire. Second, while the
fright was on her, she must be made to sign a paper.
But she would demand a reading of the paper. They could not venture to
refuse this, with the public there to hear. Suppose that during the
reading her courage should return?--she would refuse to sign then. Very
well, even that difficulty could be got over. They could read a short
paper of no importance, then slip a long and deadly one into its place
and trick her into signing that.
Yet there was still one other difficulty. If they made her seem to
abjure, that would free her from the death-penalty. They could keep her
in a prison of the Church, but they could not kill her.
That would not answer; for only her death would content the English.
Alive she was a terror, in a prison or out of it. She had escaped from
two prisons already.
But even that difficulty could be managed. Cauchon would make promises to
her; in return she would promise to leave off the male dress. He would
violate his promises, and that would so situate her that she would not be
able to keep hers. Her lapse would condemn her to the stake, and the
stake would be ready.
These were the several moves; there was nothing to do but to make them,
each in its order, and the game was won. One might almost name the day
that the betrayed girl, the most innocent creature in France and the
noblest, would go to her pitiful death.
The world knows now that Cauchon's plan was as I have sketched it to you,
but the world did not know it at that time. There are sufficient
indications that Warwick and all the other English chiefs except the
highest one--the Cardinal of Winchester--were not let into the secret,
also, that only Loyseleur and Beaupere, on the French side, knew the
scheme. Sometimes I have doubted if even Loyseleur and Beaupere knew the
whole of it at first. However, if any did, it was these two.
It is usual to let the condemned pass their last night of life in peace,
but this grace was denied to poor Joan, if one may credit the rumors of
the time. Loyseleur was smuggled into her presence, and in the character
of priest, friend, and secret partisan of France and hater of England, he
spent some hours in beseeching her to do "the only right an righteous
thing"--submit to the Church, as a good Christian should; and that then
she would straightway get out of the clutches of the dreaded English and
be transferred to the Church's prison, where she would be honorably used
and have women about her for jailers. He knew where to touch her. He knew
how odious to her was the presence of her rough and profane English
guards; he knew that her Voices had vaguely promised something which she
interpreted to be escape, rescue, release of some sort, and the chance to
burst upon France once more and victoriously complete the great work
which she had been commissioned of Heaven to do. Also there was that
other thing: if her failing body could be further weakened by loss of
rest and sleep now, her tired mind would be dazed and drowsy on the
morrow, and in ill condition to stand out against persuasions, threats,
and the sight of the stake, and also be purblind to traps and snares
which it would be swift to detect when in its normal estate.
I do not need to tell you that there was no rest for me that night. Nor
for Noel. We went to the main gate of the city before nightfall, with a
hope in our minds, based upon that vague prophecy of Joan's Voices which
seemed to promise a rescue by force at the last moment. The immense news
had flown swiftly far and wide that at last Joan of Arc was condemned,
and would be sentenced and burned alive on the morrow; and so crowds of
people were flowing in at the gate, and other crowds were being refused
admission by the soldiery; these being people who brought doubtful passes
or none at all. We scanned these crowds eagerly, but thee was nothing
about them to indicate that they were our old war-comrades in disguise,
and certainly there were no familiar faces among them. And so, when the
gate was closed at last, we turned away grieved, and more disappointed
than we cared to admit, either in speech or thought.
The streets were surging tides of excited men. It was difficult to make
one's way. Toward midnight our aimless tramp brought us to the
neighborhood of the beautiful church of St. Ouen, and there all was
bustle and work. The square was a wilderness of torches and people; and
through a guarded passage dividing the pack, laborers were carrying
planks and timbers and disappearing with them through the gate of the
churchyard. We asked what was going forward; the answer was:
"Scaffolds and the stake. Don't you know that the French witch is to be
burned in the morning?"
Then we went away. We had no heart for that place.
At dawn we were at the city gate again; this time with a hope which our
wearied bodies and fevered minds magnified into a large probability. We
had heard a report that the Abbot of Jumieges with all his monks was
coming to witness the burning. Our desire, abetted by our imagination,
turned those nine hundred monks into Joan's old campaigners, and their
Abbot into La Hire or the Bastard or D'Alencon; and we watched them file
in, unchallenged, the multitude respectfully dividing and uncovering
while they passed, with our hearts in our throats and our eyes swimming
with tears of joy and pride and exultation; and we tried to catch
glimpses of the faces under the cowls, and were prepared to give signal
to any recognized face that we were Joan's men and ready and eager to
kill and be killed in the good cause. How foolish we were!
But we were young, you know, and youth hopeth all things, believeth all
things.
20 The Betrayal
IN THE MORNING I was at my official post. It was on a platform raised the
height of a man, in the churchyard, under the eaves of St. Ouen. On this
same platform was a crowd of priests and important citizens, and several
lawyers. Abreast it, with a small space between, was another and larger
platform, handsomely canopied against sun and rain, and richly carpeted;
also it was furnished with comfortable chairs, and with two which were
more sumptuous than the others, and raised above the general level. One
of these two was occupied by a prince of the royal blood of England, his
Eminence the Cardinal of Winchester; the other by Cauchon, Bishop of
Beauvais. In the rest of the chairs sat three bishops, the
Vice-Inquisitor, eight abbots, and the sixty-two friars and lawyers who
had sat as Joan's judges in her late trials.
Twenty steps in front of the platforms was another--a table-topped
pyramid of stone, built up in retreating courses, thus forming steps. Out
of this rose that grisly thing, the stake; about the stake bundles of
fagots and firewood were piled. On the ground at the base of the pyramid
stood three crimson figures, the executioner and his assistants. At their
feet lay what had been a goodly heap of brands, but was now a smokeless
nest of ruddy coals; a foot or two from this was a supplemental supply of
wood and fagots compacted into a pile shoulder-high and containing as
much as six packhorse loads. Think of that. We seem so delicately made,
so destructible, so insubstantial; yet it is easier to reduce a granite
statue to ashes than it is to do that with a man's body.
The sight of the stake sent physical pains tingling down the nerves of my
body; and yet, turn as I would, my eyes would keep coming back t it, such
fascination has the gruesome and the terrible for us.
The space occupied by the platforms and the stake was kept open by a wall
of English soldiery, standing elbow to elbow, erect and stalwart figures,
fine and sightly in their polished steel; while from behind them on every
hand stretched far away a level plain of human heads; and there was no
window and no housetop within our view, howsoever distant, but was black
with patches and masses of people.
But there was no noise, no stir; it was as if the world was dead. The
impressiveness of this silence and solemnity was deepened by a leaden
twilight, for the sky was hidden by a pall of low-hanging storm-clouds;
and above the remote horizon faint winkings of heat-lightning played, and
now and then one caught the dull mutterings and complainings of distant
thunder.
At last the stillness was broken. From beyond the square rose an
indistinct sound, but familiar--court, crisp phrases of command; next I
saw the plain of heads dividing, and the steady swing of a marching host
was glimpsed between. My heart leaped for a moment. Was it La Hire and
his hellions? No--that was not their gait. No, it was the prisoner and
her escort; it was Joan of Arc, under guard, that was coming; my spirits
sank as low as they had been before. Weak as she was they made her walk;
they would increase her weakness all they could. The distance was not
great--it was but a few hundred yards--but short as it was it was a heavy
tax upon one who had been lying chained in one spot for months, and whose
feet had lost their powers from inaction. Yes, and for a year Joan had
known only the cool damps of a dungeon, and now she was dragging herself
through this sultry summer heat, this airless and suffocating void. As
she entered the gate, drooping with exhaustion, there was that creature
Loyseleur at her side with his head bent to her ear. We knew afterward
that he had been with her again this morning in the prison wearying her
with his persuasions and enticing her with false promises, and that he
was now still at the same work at the gate, imploring her to yield
everything that would be required of her, and assuring her that if she
would do this all would be well with her: she would be rid of the dreaded
English and find safety in the powerful shelter and protection of the
Church. A miserable man, a stony-hearted man!
The moment Joan was seated on the platform she closed her eyes and
allowed her chin to fall; and so sat, with her hands nestling in her lap,
indifferent to everything, caring for nothing but rest. And she was so
white again--white as alabaster.
How the faces of that packed mass of humanity lighted up with interest,
and with what intensity all eyes gazed upon this fragile girl! And how
natural it was; for these people realized that at last they were looking
upon that person whom they had so long hungered to see; a person whose
name and fame filled all Europe, and made all other names and all other
renowns insignificant by comparisons; Joan of Arc, the wonder of the
time, and destined to be the wonder of all times!
And I could read as by print, in their marveling countenances, the words
that were drifting through their minds: "Can it be true, is it
believable, that it is this little creature, this girl, this child with
the good face, the sweet face, the beautiful face, the dear and bonny
face, that has carried fortresses by storm, charged at the head of
victorious armies, blown the might of England out of her path with a
breath, and fought a long campaign, solitary and alone, against the
massed brains and learning of France--and had won it if the fight had
been fair!"
Evidently Cauchon had grown afraid of Manchon because of his pretty
apparent leanings toward Joan, for another recorder was in the chief
place here, which left my master and me nothing to do but sit idle and
look on.
Well, I suppose that everything had been done which could be thought of
to tire Joan's body and mind, but it was a mistake; one more device had
been invented. This was to preach a long sermon to her in that oppressive
heat.
When the preacher began, she cast up one distressed and disappointed
look, then dropped her head again. This preacher was Guillaume Erard, an
oratorical celebrity. He got his text from the Twelve Lies. He emptied
upon Joan al the calumnies in detail that had been bottled up in that
mass of venom, and called her all the brutal names that the Twelve were
labeled with, working himself into a whirlwind of fury as he went on; but
his labors were wasted, she seemed lost in dreams, she made no sign, she
did not seem to hear. At last he launched this apostrophe:
"O France, how hast thou been abused! Thou hast always been the home of
Christianity; but now, Charles, who calls himself thy King and governor,
indorses, like the heretic and schismatic that he is, the words and deeds
of a worthless and infamous woman!" Joan raised her head, and her eyes
began to burn and flash. The preacher turned to her: "It is to you, Joan,
that I speak, and I tell you that your King is schismatic and a heretic!"
Ah, he might abuse her to his heart's content; she could endure that; but
to her dying moment she could never hear in patience a word against that
ingrate, that treacherous dog our King, whose proper place was here, at
this moment, sword in hand, routing these reptiles and saving this most
noble servant that ever King had in this world--and he would have been
there if he had not been what I have called him. Joan's loyal soul was
outraged, and she turned upon the preacher and flung out a few words with
a spirit which the crowd recognized as being in accordance with the Joan
of Arc traditions:
"By my faith, sir! I make bold to say and swear, on pain of death, that
he is the most noble Christian of all Christians, and the best lover of
the faith and the Church!"
There was an explosion of applause from the crowd--which angered the
preacher, for he had been aching long to hear an expression like this,
and now that it was come at last it had fallen to the wrong person: he
had done all the work; the other had carried off all the spoil. He
stamped his foot and shouted to the sheriff:
"Make her shut up!"
That made the crowd laugh.
A mob has small respect for a grown man who has to call on a sheriff to
protect him from a sick girl.
Joan had damaged the preacher's cause more with one sentence than he had
helped it with a hundred; so he was much put out, and had trouble to get
a good start again. But he needn't have bothered; thee was no occasion.
It was mainly an English-feeling mob. It had but obeyed a law of our
nature--an irresistible law--to enjoy and applaud a spirited and promptly
delivered retort, no matter who makes it. The mob was with the preacher;
it had been beguiled for a moment, but only that; it would soon return.
It was there to see this girl burnt; so that it got that
satisfaction--without too much delay--it would be content.
Presently the preacher formally summoned Joan to submit to the Church. He
made the demand with confidence, for he had gotten the idea from
Loyseleur and Beaupere that she was worn to the bone, exhausted, and
would not be able to put forth any more resistance; and, indeed, to look
at her it seemed that they must be right. Nevertheless, she made one more
effort to hold her ground, and said, wearily:
"As to that matter, I have answered my judges before. I have told them to
report all that I have said and done to our Holy Father the Pope--to
whom, and to God first, I appeal."
Again, out of her native wisdom, she had brought those words of
tremendous import, but was ignorant of their value. But they could have
availed her nothing in any case, now, with the stake there and these
thousands of enemies about her. Yet they made every churchman there
blench, and the preacher changed the subject with all haste. Well might
those criminals blench, for Joan's appeal of her case to the Pope
stripped Cauchon at once of jurisdiction over it, and annulled all that
he and his judges had already done in the matter and all that they should
do in it henceforth.
Joan went on presently to reiterate, after some further talk, that she
had acted by command of God in her deeds and utterances; then, when an
attempt was made to implicate the King, and friends of hers and his, she
stopped that. She said:
"I charge my deeds and words upon no one, neither upon my King nor any
other. If there is any fault in them, I am responsible and no other."
She was asked if she would not recant those of her words and deeds which
had been pronounced evil by her judges. Here answer made confusion and
damage again:
"I submit them to God and the Pope."
The Pope once more! It was very embarrassing. Here was a person who was
asked to submit her case to the Church, and who frankly consents--offers
to submit it to the very head of it. What more could any one require? How
was one to answer such a formidably unanswerable answer as that?
The worried judges put their heads together and whispered and planned and
discussed. Then they brought forth this sufficiently shambling
conclusion--but it was the best they could do, in so close a place: they
said the Pope was so far away; and it was not necessary to go to him
anyway, because the present judges had sufficient power and authority to
deal with the present case, and were in effect "the Church" to that
extent. At another time they could have smiled at this conceit, but not
now; they were not comfortable enough now.
The mob was getting impatient. It was beginning to put on a threatening
aspect; it was tired of standing, tired of the scorching heat; and the
thunder was coming nearer, the lightning was flashing brighter. It was
necessary to hurry this matter to a close. Erard showed Joan a written
form, which had been prepared and made all ready beforehand, and asked
her to abjure.
"Abjure? What is abjure?"
She did not know the word. It was explained to her by Massieu. She tried
to understand, but she was breaking, under exhaustion, and she could not
gather the meaning. It was all a jumble and confusion of strange words.
In her despair she sent out this beseeching cry:
"I appeal to the Church universal whether I ought to abjure or not!"
Erard exclaimed:
"You shall abjure instantly, or instantly be burnt!"
She glanced up, at those awful words, and for the first time she saw the
stake and the mass of red coals--redder and angrier than ever now under
the constantly deepening storm-gloom. She gasped and staggered up out of
her seat muttering and mumbling incoherently, and gazed vacantly upon the
people and the scene about her like one who is dazed, or thinks he
dreams, and does not know where he is.
The priests crowded about her imploring her to sign the paper, there were
many voices beseeching and urging her at once, there was great turmoil
and shouting and excitement among the populace and everywhere.
"Sign! sign!" from the priests; "sign--sign and be saved!" And Loyseleur
was urging at her ear, "Do as I told you--do not destroy yourself!"
Joan said plaintively to these people:
"Ah, you do not do well to seduce me."
The judges joined their voices to the others. Yes, even the iron in their
hearts melted, and they said:
"O Joan, we pity you so! Take back what you have said, or we must deliver
you up to punishment."
And now there was another voice--it was from the other platform--pealing
solemnly above the din: Cauchon's--reading the sentence of death!
Joan's strength was all spent. She stood looking about her in a
bewildered way a moment, then slowly she sank to her knees, and bowed her
head and said:
"I submit."
They gave her no time to reconsider--they knew the peril of that. The
moment the words were out of her mouth Massieu was reading to her the
abjuration, and she was repeating the words after him mechanically,
unconsciously--and smiling; for her wandering mind was far away in some
happier world.
Then this short paper of six lines was slipped aside and a long one of
many pages was smuggled into its place, and she, noting nothing, put her
mark on it, saying, in pathetic apology, that she did not know how to
write. But a secretary of the King of England was there to take care of
that defect; he guided her hand with his own, and wrote her
name--Jehanne.
The great crime was accomplished. She had signed--what? She did not
know--but the others knew. She had signed a paper confessing herself a
sorceress, a dealer with devils, a liar, a blasphermer of God and His
angels, a lover of blood, a promoter of sedition, cruel, wicked,
commissioned of Satan; and this signature of hers bound her to resume the
dress of a woman.
There were other promises, but that one would answer, without the others;
and that one could be made to destroy her.
Loyseleur pressed forward and praised her for having done "such a good
day's work."
But she was still dreamy, she hardly heard.
Then Cauchon pronounced the words which dissolved the excommunication and
restored her to her beloved Church, with all the dear privileges of
worship. Ah, she heard that! You could see it in the deep gratitude that
rose in her face and transfigured it with joy.
But how transient was that happiness! For Cauchon, without a tremor of
pity in his voice, added these crushing words:
"And that she may repent of her crimes and repeat them no more, she is
sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, with the bread of affliction and the
water of anguish!"
Perpetual imprisonment! She had never dreamed of that--such a thing had
never been hinted to her by Loyseleur or by any other. Loyseleur had
distinctly said and promised that "all would be well with her." And the
very last words spoken to her by Erard, on that very platform, when he
was urging her to abjure, was a straight, unqualified promised--that if
she would do it she should go free from captivity.
She stood stunned and speechless a moment; then she remembered, with such
solacement as the thought could furnish, that by another clear promise
made by Cauchon himself--she would at least be the Church's captive, and
have women about her in place of a brutal foreign soldiery. So she turned
to the body of priests and said, with a sad resignation:
"Now, you men of the Church, take me to your prison, and leave me no
longer in the hands of the English"; and she gathered up her chains and
prepared to move.
But alas! now came these shameful words from Cauchon--and with them a
mocking laugh:
"Take her to the prison whence she came!"
Poor abused girl! She stood dumb, smitten, paralyzed. It was pitiful to
see. She had been beguiled, lied to, betrayed; she saw it all now.
The rumbling of a drum broke upon the stillness, and for just one moment
she thought of the glorious deliverance promised by her Voices--I read it
in the rapture that lit her face; then she saw what it was--her prison
escort--and that light faded, never to revive again. And now her head
began a piteous rocking motion, swaying slowly, this way and that, as is
the way when one is suffering unwordable pain, or when one's heart is
broken; then drearily she went from us, with her face in her hands, and
sobbing bitterly.
21 Respited Only for Torture
THERE IS no certainty that any one in all Rouen was in the secret of the
deep game which Cauchon was playing except the Cardinal of Winchester.
Then you can imagine the astonishment and stupefaction of that vast mob
gathered there and those crowds of churchmen assembled on the two
platforms, when they saw Joan of Arc moving away, alive and
whole--slipping out of their grip at last, after all this tedious
waiting, all this tantalizing expectancy.
Nobody was able to stir or speak for a while, so paralyzing was the
universal astonishment, so unbelievable the fact that the stake was
actually standing there unoccupied and its prey gone.
Then suddenly everybody broke into a fury of rage; maledictions and
charges of treachery began to fly freely; yes, and even stones: a stone
came near killing the Cardinal of Winchester--it just missed his head.
But the man who threw it was not to blame, for he was excited, and a
person who is excited never can throw straight.
The tumult was very great, indeed, for a while. In the midst of it a
chaplain of the Cardinal even forgot the proprieties so far as to
oppobriously assail the August Bishop of Beauvais himself, shaking his
fist in his face and shouting:
"By God, you are a traitor!"
"You lie!" responded the Bishop.
He a traitor! Oh, far from it; he certainly was the last Frenchman that
any Briton had a right to bring that charge against.
The Early of Warwick lost his temper, too. He was a doughty soldier, but
when it came to the intellectuals--when it came to delicate chicane, and
scheming, and trickery--he couldn't see any further through a millstone
than another. So he burst out in his frank warrior fashion, and swore
that the King of England was being treacherously used, and that Joan of
Arc was going to be allowed to cheat the stake. But they whispered
comfort into his ear:
"Give yourself no uneasiness, my lord; we shall soon have her again."
Perhaps the like tidings found their way all around, for good news
travels fast as well as bad. At any rate, the ragings presently quieted
down, and the huge concourse crumbled apart and disappeared. And thus we
reached the noon of that fearful Thursday.
We two youths were happy; happier than any words can tell--for we were
not in the secret any more than the rest. Joan's life was saved. We knew
that, and that was enough. France would hear of this day's infamous
work--and then! Why, then her gallant sons would flock to her standard by
thousands and thousands, multitudes upon multitudes, and their wrath
would be like the wrath of the ocean when the storm-winds sweep it; and
they would hurl themselves against this doomed city and overwhelm it like
the resistless tides of that ocean, and Joan of Arc would march again!
In six days--seven days--one short week--noble France, grateful France,
indignant France, would be thundering at these gates--let us count the
hours, let us count the minutes, let us count the seconds! O happy day, O
day of ecstasy, how our hearts sang in our bosoms!
For we were young then, yes, we were very young.
Do you think the exhausted prisoner was allowed to rest and sleep after
she had spent the small remnant of her strength in dragging her tired
body back to the dungeon?
No, there was no rest for her, with those sleuth-hounds on her track.
Cauchon and some of his people followed her to her lair straightway; they
found her dazed and dull, her mental and physical forces in a state of
prostration. They told her she had abjured; that she had made certain
promises--among them, to resume the apparel of her sex; and that if she
relapsed, the Church would cast her out for good and all. She heard the
words, but they had no meaning to her. She was like a person who has
taken a narcotic and is dying for sleep, dying for rest from nagging,
dying to be let alone, and who mechanically does everything the
persecutor asks, taking but dull note of the things done, and but dully
recording them in the memory. And so Joan put on the gown which Cauchon
and his people had brought; and would come to herself by and by, and have
at first but a dim idea as to when and how the change had come about.
Cauchon went away happy and content. Joan had resumed woman's dress
without protest; also she had been formally warned against relapsing. He
had witnesses to these facts. How could matters be better?
But suppose she should not relapse?
Why, then she must be forced to do it.
Did Cauchon hint to the English guards that thenceforth if they chose to
make their prisoner's captivity crueler and bitterer than ever, no
official notice would be taken of it? Perhaps so; since the guards did
begin that policy at once, and no official notice was taken of it. Yes,
from that moment Joan's life in that dungeon was made almost unendurable.
Do not ask me to enlarge upon it. I will not do it.
22 Joan Gives the Fatal Answer
FRIDAY and Saturday were happy days for Noel and me. Our minds were full
of our splendid dream of France aroused--France shaking her mane--France
on the march--France at the gates--Rouen in ashes, and Joan free! Our
imagination was on fire; we were delirious with pride and joy. For we
were very young, as I have said.
We knew nothing about what had been happening in the dungeon in the
yester-afternoon. We supposed that as Joan had abjured and been taken
back into the forgiving bosom of the Church, she was being gently used
now, and her captivity made as pleasant and comfortable for her as the
circumstances would allow. So, in high contentment, we planned out our
share in the great rescue, and fought our part of the fight over and over
again during those two happy days--as happy days as ever I have known.
Sunday morning came. I was awake, enjoying the balmy, lazy weather, and
thinking. Thinking of the rescue--what else? I had no other thought now.
I was absorbed in that, drunk with the happiness of it.
I heard a voice shouting far down the street, and soon it came nearer,
and I caught the words:
"Joan of Arc has relapsed! The witch's time has come!"
It stopped my heart, it turned my blood to ice. That was more than sixty
years ago, but that triumphant note rings as clear in my memory to-day as
it rang in my ear that long-vanished summer morning. We are so strangely
made; the memories that could make us happy pass away; it is the memories
that break our hearts that abide.
Soon other voices took up that cry--tens, scores, hundreds of voices; all
the world seemed filled with the brutal joy of it. And there were other
clamors--the clatter of rushing feet, merry congratulations, bursts of
coarse laughter, the rolling of drums, the boom and crash of distant
bands profaning the sacred day with the music of victory and
thanksgiving.
About the middle of the afternoon came a summons for Manchon and me to go
to Joan's dungeon--a summons from Cauchon. But by that time distrust had
already taken possession of the English and their soldiery again, and all
Rouen was in an angry and threatening mood. We could see plenty of
evidences of this from our own windows--fist-shaking, black looks,
tumultuous tides of furious men billowing by along the street.
And we learned that up at the castle things were going very badly,
indeed; that there was a great mob gathered there who considered the
relapse a lie and a priestly trick, and among them many half-drunk
English soldiers. Moreover, these people had gone beyond words. They had
laid hands upon a number of churchmen who were trying to enter the
castle, and it had been difficult work to rescue them and save their
lives.
And so Manchon refused to go. He said he would not go a step without a
safeguard from Warwick. So next morning Warwick sent an escort of
soldiers, and then we went. Matters had not grown peacefuler meantime,
but worse. The soldiers protected us from bodily damage, but as we passed
through the great mob at the castle we were assailed with insults and
shameful epithets. I bore it well enough, though, and said to myself,
with secret satisfaction, "In three or four short days, my lads, you will
be employing your tongues in a different sort from this--and I shall be
there to hear."
To my mind these were as good as dead men. How many of them would still
be alive after the rescue that was coming? Not more than enough to amuse
the executioner a short half-hour, certainly.
It turned out that the report was true. Joan had relapsed. She was
sitting there in her chains, clothed again in her male attire.
She accused nobody. That was her way. It was not in her character to hold
a servant to account for what his master had made him do, and her mind
had cleared now, and she knew that the advantage which had been taken of
her the previous morning had its origin, not in the subordinate but in
the master--Cauchon.
Here is what had happened. While Joan slept, in the early morning of
Sunday, one of the guards stole her female apparel and put her male
attire in its place. When she woke she asked for the other dress, but the
guards refused to give it back. She protested, and said she was forbidden
to wear the male dress. But they continued to refuse. She had to have
clothing, for modesty's sake; moreover, she saw that she could not save
her life if she must fight for it against treacheries like this; so she
put on the forbidden garments, knowing what the end would be. She was
weary of the struggle, poor thing.
We had followed in the wake of Cauchon, the Vice-Inquisitor, and the
others--six or eight--and when I saw Joan sitting there, despondent,
forlorn, and still in chains, when I was expecting to find her situation
so different, I did not know what to make of it. The shock was very
great. I had doubted the relapse perhaps; possibly I had believed in it,
but had not realized it.
Cauchon's victory was complete. He had had a harassed and irritated and
disgusted look for a long time, but that was all gone now, and
contentment and serenity had taken its place. His purple face was full of
tranquil and malicious happiness. He went trailing his robes and stood
grandly in front of Joan, with his legs apart, and remained so more than
a minute, gloating over her and enjoying the sight of this poor ruined
creature, who had won so lofty a place for him in the service of the meek
and merciful Jesus, Saviour of the World, Lord of the Universe--in case
England kept her promise to him, who kept no promises himself.
Presently the judges began to question Joan. One of them, named
Marguerie, who was a man with more insight than prudence, remarked upon
Joan's change of clothing, and said:
"There is something suspicious about this. How could it have come about
without connivance on the part of others? Perhaps even something worse?"
"Thousand devils!" screamed Cauchon, in a fury. "Will you shut your
mouth?"
"Armagnac! Traitor!" shouted the soldiers on guard, and made a rush for
Marguerie with their lances leveled. It was with the greatest difficulty
that he was saved from being run through the body. He made no more
attempts to help the inquiry, poor man. The other judges proceeded with
the questionings.
"Why have you resumed this male habit?"
I did not quite catch her answer, for just then a soldier's halberd
slipped from his fingers and fell on the stone floor with a crash; but I
thought I understood Joan to say that she had resumed it of her own
motion.
"But you have promised and sworn that you would not go back to it."
I was full of anxiety to hear her answer to that question; and when it
came it was just what I was expecting. She said--quiet quietly:
"I have never intended and never understood myself to swear I would not
resume it."
There--I had been sure, all along, that she did not know what she was
doing and saying on the platform Thursday, and this answer of hers was
proof that I had not been mistaken. Then she went on to add this:
"But I had a right to resume it, because the promises made to me have not
been kept--promises that I should be allowed to go to mass and receive
the communion, and that I should be freed from the bondage of these
chains--but they are still upon me, as you see."
"Nevertheless, you have abjured, and have especially promised to return
no more to the dress of a man."
Then Joan held out her fettered hands sorrowfully toward these unfeeling
men and said:
"I would rather die than continue so. But if they may be taken off, and
if I may hear mass, and be removed to a penitential prison, and have a
woman about me, I will be good, and will do what shall seem good to you
that I do."
Cauchon sniffed scoffingly at that. Honor the compact which he and his
had made with her?
Fulfil its conditions? What need of that? Conditions had been a good
thing to concede, temporarily, and for advantage; but they have served
their turn--let something of a fresher sort and of more consequence be
considered. The resumption of the male dress was sufficient for all
practical purposes, but perhaps Joan could be led to add something to
that fatal crime. So Cauchon asked her if her Voices had spoken to her
since Thursday--and he reminded her of her abjuration.
"Yes," she answered; and then it came out that the Voices had talked with
her about the abjuration--told her about it, I suppose. She guilelessly
reasserted the heavenly origin of her mission, and did it with the
untroubled mien of one who was not conscious that she had ever knowingly
repudiated it. So I was convinced once more that she had had no notion of
what she was doing that Thursday morning on the platform. Finally she
said, "My Voices told me I did very wrong to confess that what I had done
was not well." Then she sighed, and said with simplicity, "But it was the
fear of the fire that made me do so."
That is, fear of the fire had made her sign a paper whose contents she
had not understood then, but understood now by revelation of her Voices
and by testimony of her persecutors.
She was sane now and not exhausted; her courage had come back, and with
it her inborn loyalty to the truth. She was bravely and serenely speaking
it again, knowing that it would deliver her body up to that very fire
which had such terrors for her.
That answer of hers was quite long, quite frank, wholly free from
concealments or palliations. It made me shudder; I knew she was
pronouncing sentence of death upon herself. So did poor Manchon. And he
wrote in the margin abreast of it:
"RESPONSIO MORTIFERA."
Fatal answer. Yes, all present knew that it was, indeed, a fatal answer.
Then there fell a silence such as falls in a sick-room when the watchers
of the dying draw a deep breath and say softly one to another, "All is
over."
Here, likewise, all was over; but after some moments Cauchon, wishing to
clinch this matter and make it final, put this question:
"Do you still believe that your Voices are St. Marguerite and St.
Catherine?"
"Yes--and that they come from God."
"Yet you denied them on the scaffold?"
Then she made direct and clear affirmation that she had never had any
intention to deny them; and that if--I noted the if--"if she had made
some retractions and revocations on the scaffold it was from fear of the
fire, and it was a violation of the truth."
There it is again, you see. She certainly never knew what it was she had
done on the scaffold until she was told of it afterward by these people
and by her Voices.
And now she closed this most painful scene with these words; and there
was a weary note in them that was pathetic:
"I would rather do my penance all at once; let me die. I cannot endure
captivity any longer."
The spirit born for sunshine and liberty so longed for release that it
would take it in any form, even that.
Several among the company of judges went from the place troubled and
sorrowful, the others in another mood. In the court of the castle we
found the Earl of Warwick and fifty English waiting, impatient for news.
As soon as Cauchon saw them he shouted--laughing--think of a man
destroying a friendless poor girl and then having the heart to laugh at
it:
"Make yourselves comfortable--it's all over with her!"
23 The Time Is at Hand
THE YOUNG can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noel
and me now; but the hopes of the young are quick to rise again, and it
was so with ours. We called back that vague promise of the Voices, and
said the one to the other that the glorious release was to happen at "the
last moment"--"that other time was not the last moment, but this is; it
will happen now; the King will come, La Hire will come, and with them our
veterans, and behind them all France!" And so we were full of heart
again, and could already hear, in fancy, that stirring music the clash of
steel and the war-cries and the uproar of the onset, and in fancy see our
prisoner free, her chains gone, her sword in her hand.
But this dream was to pass also, and come to nothing. Late at night, when
Manchon came in, he said:
"I am come from the dungeon, and I have a message for you from that poor
child."
A message to me! If he had been noticing I think he would have discovered
me--discovered that my indifference concerning the prisoner was a
pretense; for I was caught off my guard, and was so moved and so exalted
to be so honored by her that I must have shown my feeling in my face and
manner.
"A message for me, your reverence?"
"Yes. It is something she wishes done. She said she had noticed the young
man who helps me, and that he had a good face; and did I think he would
do a kindness for her? I said I knew you would, and asked her what it
was, and she said a letter--would you write a letter to her mother?
"And I said you would. But I said I would do it myself, and gladly; but
she said no, that my labors were heavy, and she thought the young man
would not mind the doing of this service for one not able to do it for
herself, she not knowing how to write. Then I would have sent for you,
and at that the sadness vanished out of her face. Why, it was as if she
was going to see a friend, poor friendless thing. But I was not
permitted. I did my best, but the orders remain as strict as ever, the
doors are closed against all but officials; as before, none but officials
may speak to her. So I went back and told her, and she sighed, and was
sad again. Now this is what she begs you to write to her mother. It is
partly a strange message, and to me means nothing, but she said her
mother would understand. You will 'convey her adoring love to her family
and her village friends, and say there will be no rescue, for that this
night--and it is the third time in the twelvemonth, and is final--she has
seen the Vision of the Tree.'"
"How strange!"
"Yes, it is strange, but that is what she said; and said her parents
would understand. And for a little time she was lost in dreams and
thinkings, and her lips moved, and I caught in her muttering these lines,
which she said over two or three times, and they seemed to bring peace
and contentment to her. I set them down, thinking they might have some
connection with her letter and be useful; but it was not so; they were a
mere memory, floating idly in a tired mind, and they have no meaning, at
least no relevancy."
I took the piece of paper, and found what I knew I should find:
And when in exile wand'ring, we Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
There was no hope any more. I knew it now. I knew that Joan's letter was
a message to Noel and me, as well as to her family, and that its object
was to banish vain hopes from our minds and tell us from her own mouth of
the blow that was going to fall upon us, so that we, being her soldiers,
would know it for a command to bear it as became us and her, and so
submit to the will of God; and in thus obeying, find assuagement of our
grief. It was like her, for she was always thinking of others, not of
herself. Yes, her heart was sore for us; she could find time to think of
us, the humblest of her servants, and try to soften our pain, lighten the
burden of our troubles--she that was drinking of the bitter waters; she
that was walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.
I wrote the letter. You will know what it cost me, without my telling
you. I wrote it with the same wooden stylus which had put upon parchment
the first words ever dictated by Joan of Arc--that high summons to the
English to vacate France, two years past, when she was a lass of
seventeen; it had now set down the last ones which she was ever to
dictate. Then I broke it. For the pen that had served Joan of Arc could
not serve any that would come after her in this earth without abasement.
The next day, May 29th, Cauchon summoned his serfs, and forty-two
responded. It is charitable to believe that the other twenty were ashamed
to come. The forty-two pronounced her a relapsed heretic, and condemned
her to be delivered over to the secular arm. Cauchon thanked them.
Then he sent orders that Joan of Arc be conveyed the next morning to the
place known as the Old Market; and that she be then delivered to the
civil judge, and by the civil judge to the executioner. That meant she
would be burnt.
All the afternoon and evening of Tuesday, the 29th, the news was flying,
and the people of the country-side flocking to Rouen to see the
tragedy--all, at least, who could prove their English sympathies and
count upon admission. The press grew thicker and thicker in the streets,
the excitement grew higher and higher. And now a thing was noticeable
again which had been noticeable more than once before--that there was
pity for Joan in the hearts of many of these people. Whenever she had
been in great danger it had manifested itself, and now it was apparent
again--manifest in a pathetic dumb sorrow which was visible in many
faces.
Early the next morning, Wednesday, Martin Ladvenu and another friar were
sent to Joan to prepare her for death; and Manchon and I went with
them--a hard service for me. We tramped through the dim corridors,
winding this way and that, and piercing ever deeper and deeper into that
vast heart of stone, and at last we stood before Joan. But she did not
know it. She sat with her hands in her lap and her head bowed, thinking,
and her face was very sad. One might not know what she was thinking of.
Of her home, and the peaceful pastures, and the friends she was no more
to see? Of her wrongs, and her forsaken estate, and the cruelties which
had been put upon her? Or was it of death--the death which she had longed
for, and which was now so close?
Or was it of the kind of death she must suffer? I hoped not; for she
feared only one kind, and that one had for her unspeakable terrors. I
believed she so feared that one that with her strong will she would shut
the thought of it wholly out of her mind, and hope and believe that God
would take pity on her and grant her an easier one; and so it might
chance that the awful news which we were bringing might come as a
surprise to her at last.
We stood silent awhile, but she was still unconscious of us, still deep
in her sad musings and far away. Then Martin Ladvenu said, softly:
"Joan."
She looked up then, with a little start and a wan smile, and said:
"Speak. Have you a message for me?"
"Yes, my poor child. Try to bear it. Do you think you can bear it?"
"Yes"--very softly, and her head drooped again.
"I am come to prepare you for death."
A faint shiver trembled through her wasted body. There was a pause. In
the stillness we could hear our breathings. Then she said, still in that
low voice:
"When will it be?"
The muffled notes of a tolling bell floated to our ears out of the
distance.
"Now. The time is at hand."
That slight shiver passed again.
"It is so soon--ah, it is so soon!"
There was a long silence. The distant throbbings of the bell pulsed
through it, and we stood motionless and listening. But it was broken at
last:
"What death is it?"
"By fire!"
"Oh, I knew it, I knew it!" She sprang wildly to her feet, and wound her
hands in her hair, and began to writhe and sob, oh, so piteously, and
mourn and grieve and lament, and turn to first one and then another of
us, and search our faces beseechingly, as hoping she might find help and
friendliness there, poor thing--she that had never denied these to any
creature, even her wounded enemy on the battle-field.
"Oh, cruel, cruel, to treat me so! And must my body, that has never been
defiled, be consumed today and turned to ashes? Ah, sooner would I that
my head were cut off seven times than suffer this woeful death. I had the
promise of the Church's prison when I submitted, and if I had but been
there, and not left here in the hands of my enemies, this miserable fate
had not befallen me.
"Oh, I appeal to God the Great Judge, against the injustice which has
been done me."
There was none there that could endure it. They turned away, with the
tears running down their faces. In a moment I was on my knees at her
feet. At once she thought only of my danger, and bent and whispered in my
hear: "Up!--do not peril yourself, good heart. There--God bless you
always!" and I felt the quick clasp of her hand. Mine was the last hand
she touched with hers in life. None saw it; history does not know of it
or tell of it, yet it is true, just as I have told it. The next moment
she saw Cauchon coming, and she went and stood before him and reproached
him, saying:
"Bishop, it is by you that I die!"
He was not shamed, not touched; but said, smoothly:
"Ah, be patient, Joan. You die because you have not kept your promise,
but have returned to your sins."
"Alas," she said, "if you had put me in the Church's prison, and given me
right and proper keepers, as you promised, this would not have happened.
And for this I summon you to answer before God!"
Then Cauchon winced, and looked less placidly content than before, and he
turned him about and went away.
Joan stood awhile musing. She grew calmer, but occasionally she wiped her
eyes, and now and then sobs shook her body; but their violence was
modifying now, and the intervals between them were growing longer.
Finally she looked up and saw Pierre Maurice, who had come in with the
Bishop, and she said to him:
"Master Peter, where shall I be this night?"
"Have you not good hope in God?"
"Yes--and by His grace I shall be in Paradise."
Now Martin Ladvenu heard her in confession; then she begged for the
sacrament. But how grant the communion to one who had been publicly cut
off from the Church, and was now no more entitled to its privileges than
an unbaptized pagan? The brother could not do this, but he sent to
Cauchon to inquire what he must do. All laws, human and divine, were
alike to that man--he respected none of them. He sent back orders to
grant Joan whatever she wished. Her last speech to him had reached his
fears, perhaps; it could not reach his heart, for he had none.
The Eucharist was brought now to that poor soul that had yearned for it
with such unutterable longing all these desolate months. It was a solemn
moment. While we had been in the deeps of the prison, the public courts
of the castle had been filling up with crowds of the humbler sort of men
and women, who had learned what was going on in Joan's cell, and had come
with softened hearts to do--they knew not what; to hear--they knew not
what. We knew nothing of this, for they were out of our view. And there
were other great crowds of the like caste gathered in masses outside the
castle gates. And when the lights and the other accompaniments of the
Sacrament passed by, coming to Joan in the prison, all those multitudes
kneeled down and began to pray for her, and many wept; and when the
solemn ceremony of the communion began in Joan's cell, out of the
distance a moving sound was borne moaning to our ears--it was those
invisible multitudes chanting the litany for a departing soul.
The fear of the fiery death was gone from Joan of Arc now, to come again
no more, except for one fleeting instant--then it would pass, and
serenity and courage would take its place and abide till the end.
24 Joan the Martyr
AT NINE o'clock the Maid of Orleans, Deliverer of France, went forth in
the grace of her innocence and her youth to lay down her life for the
country she loved with such devotion, and for the King that had abandoned
her. She sat in the cart that is used only for felons. In one respect she
was treated worse than a felon; for whereas she was on her way to be
sentenced by the civil arm, she already bore her judgment inscribed in
advance upon a miter-shaped cap which she wore:
HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, IDOLATER
In the cart with her sat the friar Martin Ladvenu and Maetre Jean
Massieu. She looked girlishly fair and sweet and saintly in her long
white robe, and when a gush of sunlight flooded her as she emerged from
the gloom of the prison and was yet for a moment still framed in the arch
of the somber gate, the massed multitudes of poor folk murmured "A
vision! a vision!" and sank to their knees praying, and many of the women
weeping; and the moving invocation for the dying arose again, and was
taken up and borne along, a majestic wave of sound, which accompanied the
doomed, solacing and blessing her, all the sorrowful way to the place of
death. "Christ have pity! Saint Margaret have pity! Pray for her, all ye
saints, archangels, and blessed martyrs, pray for her! Saints and angels
intercede for her! From thy wrath, good Lord, deliver her! O Lord God,
save her! Have mercy on her, we beseech Thee, good Lord!"
It is just and true what one of the histories has said: "The poor and the
helpless had nothing but their prayers to give Joan of Arc; but these we
may believe were not unavailing. There are few more pathetic events
recorded in history than this weeping, helpless, praying crowd, holding
their lighted candles and kneeling on the pavement beneath the prison
walls of the old fortress."
And it was so all the way: thousands upon thousands massed upon their
knees and stretching far down the distances, thick-sown with the faint
yellow candle-flames, like a field starred with golden flowers.
But there were some that did not kneel; these were the English soldiers.
They stood elbow to elbow, on each side of Joan's road, and walled it in
all the way; and behind these living walls knelt the multitudes.
By and by a frantic man in priest's garb came wailing and lamenting, and
tore through the crowd and the barriers of soldiers and flung himself on
his knees by Joan's cart and put up his hands in supplication, crying
out:
"O forgive, forgive!"
It was Loyseleur!
And Joan forgave him; forgave him out of a heart that knew nothing but
forgiveness, nothing but compassion, nothing but pity for all that
suffer, let their offense be what it might. And she had no word of
reproach for this poor wretch who had wrought day and night with deceits
and treacheries and hypocrisies to betray her to her death.
The soldiers would have killed him, but the Earl of Warwick saved his
life. What became of him is not known. He hid himself from the world
somewhere, to endure his remorse as he might.
In the square of the Old Market stood the two platforms and the stake
that had stood before in the churchyard of St. Ouen. The platforms were
occupied as before, the one by Joan and her judges, the other by great
dignitaries, the principal being Cauchon and the English
Cardinal--Winchester. The square was packed with people, the windows and
roofs of the blocks of buildings surrounding it were black with them.
When the preparations had been finished, all noise and movement gradually
ceased, and a waiting stillness followed which was solemn and impressive.
And now, by order of Cauchon, an ecclesiastic named Nicholas Midi
preached a sermon, wherein he explained that when a branch of the
vine--which is the Church--becomes diseased and corrupt, it must be cut
away or it will corrupt and destroy the whole vine. He made it appear
that Joan, through her wickedness, was a menace and a peril to the
Church's purity and holiness, and her death therefore necessary. When he
was come to the end of his discourse he turned toward her and paused a
moment, then he said:
"Joan, the Church can no longer protect you. Go in peace!"
Joan had been placed wholly apart and conspicuous, to signify the
Church's abandonment of her, and she sat there in her loneliness, waiting
in patience and resignation for the end. Cauchon addressed her now. He
had been advised to read the form of her abjuration to her, and had
brought it with him; but he changed his mind, fearing that she would
proclaim the truth--that she had never knowingly abjured--and so bring
shame upon him and eternal infamy. He contented himself with admonishing
her to keep in mind her wickednesses, and repent of them, and think of
her salvation. Then he solemnly pronounced her excommunicate and cut off
from the body of the Church. With a final word he delivered her over to
the secular arm for judgment and sentence.
Joan, weeping, knelt and began to pray. For whom? Herself? Oh, no--for
the King of France. Her voice rose sweet and clear, and penetrated all
hearts with its passionate pathos. She never thought of his treacheries
to her, she never thought of his desertion of her, she never remembered
that it was because he was an ingrate that she was here to die a
miserable death; she remembered only that he was her King, that she was
his loyal and loving subject, and that his enemies had undermined his
cause with evil reports and false charges, and he not by to defend
himself. And so, in the very presence of death, she forgot her own
troubles to implore all in her hearing to be just to him; to believe that
he was good and noble and sincere, and not in any way to blame for any
acts of hers, neither advising them nor urging them, but being wholly
clear and free of all responsibility for them. Then, closing, she begged
in humble and touching words that all here present would pray for her and
would pardon her, both her enemies and such as might look friendly upon
her and feel pity for her in their hearts.
There was hardly one heart there that was not touched--even the English,
even the judges showed it, and there was many a lip that trembled and
many an eye that was blurred with tears; yes, even the English
Cardinal's--that man with a political heart of stone but a human heart of
flesh.
The secular judge who should have delivered judgment and pronounced
sentence was himself so disturbed that he forgot his duty, and Joan went
to her death unsentenced--thus completing with an illegality what had
begun illegally and had so continued to the end. He only said--to the
guards:
"Take her"; and to the executioner, "Do your duty."
Joan asked for a cross. None was able to furnish one. But an English
soldier broke a stick in two and crossed the pieces and tied them
together, and this cross he gave her, moved to it by the good heart that
was in him; and she kissed it and put it in her bosom. Then Isambard de
la Pierre went to the church near by and brought her a consecrated one;
and this one also she kissed, and pressed it to her bosom with rapture,
and then kissed it again and again, covering it with tears and pouring
out her gratitude to God and the saints.
And so, weeping, and with her cross to her lips, she climbed up the cruel
steps to the face of the stake, with the friar Isambard at her side. Then
she was helped up to the top of the pile of wood that was built around
the lower third of the stake and stood upon it with her back against the
stake, and the world gazing up at her breathless. The executioner
ascended to her side and wound chains around her slender body, and so
fastened her to the stake. Then he descended to finish his dreadful
office; and there she remained alone--she that had had so many friends in
the days when she was free, and had been so loved and so dear.
All these things I saw, albeit dimly and blurred with tears; but I could
bear no more. I continued in my place, but what I shall deliver to you
now I got by others' eyes and others' mouths. Tragic sounds there were
that pierced my ears and wounded my heart as I sat there, but it is as I
tell you: the latest image recorded by my eyes in that desolating hour
was Joan of Arc with the grace of her comely youth still unmarred; and
that image, untouched by time or decay, has remained with me all my days.
Now I will go on.
If any thought that now, in that solemn hour when all transgressors
repent and confess, she would revoke her revocation and say her great
deeds had been evil deeds and Satan and his fiends their source, they
erred. No such thought was in her blameless mind. She was not thinking of
herself and her troubles, but of others, and of woes that might befall
them. And so, turning her grieving eyes about her, where rose the towers
and spires of that fair city, she said:
"Oh, Rouen, Rouen, must I die here, and must you be my tomb? Ah, Rouen,
Rouen, I have great fear that you will suffer for my death."
A whiff of smoke swept upward past her face, and for one moment terror
seized her and she cried out, "Water! Give me holy water!" but the next
moment her fears were gone, and they came no more to torture her.
She heard the flames crackling below her, and immediately distress for a
fellow-creature who was in danger took possession of her. It was the
friar Isambard. She had given him her cross and begged him to raise it
toward her face and let her eyes rest in hope and consolation upon it
till she was entered into the peace of God. She made him go out from the
danger of the fire. Then she was satisfied, and said:
"Now keep it always in my sight until the end."
Not even yet could Cauchon, that man without shame, endure to let her die
in peace, but went toward her, all black with crimes and sins as he was,
and cried out:
"I am come, Joan, to exhort you for the last time to repent and seek the
pardon of God."
"I die through you," she said, and these were the last words she spoke to
any upon earth.
Then the pitchy smoke, shot through with red flashes of flame, rolled up
in a thick volume and hid her from sight; and from the heart of this
darkness her voice rose strong and eloquent in prayer, and when by
moments the wind shredded somewhat of the smoke aside, there were veiled
glimpses of an upturned face and moving lips. At last a mercifully swift
tide of flame burst upward, and none saw that face any more nor that
form, and the voice was still.
Yes, she was gone from us: JOAN OF ARC! What little words they are, to
tell of a rich world made empty and poor!
CONCLUSION
JOAN'S BROTHER Jacques died in Domremy during the Great Trial at Rouen.
This was according to the prophecy which Joan made that day in the
pastures the time that she said the rest of us would go to the great
wars.
When her poor old father heard of the martyrdom it broke his heart, and
he died.
The mother was granted a pension by the city of Orleans, and upon this
she lived out her days, which were many. Twenty-four years after her
illustrious child's death she traveled all the way to Paris in the
winter-time and was present at the opening of the discussion in the
Cathedral of Notre Dame which was the first step in the Rehabilitation.
Paris was crowded with people, from all about France, who came to get
sight of the venerable dame, and it was a touching spectacle when she
moved through these reverent wet-eyed multitudes on her way to the grand
honors awaiting her at the cathedral. With her were Jean and Pierre, no
longer the light-hearted youths who marched with us from Vaucouleurs, but
war-torn veterans with hair beginning to show frost.
After the martyrdom Noel and I went back to Domremy, but presently when
the Constable Richemont superseded La Tremouille as the King's chief
adviser and began the completion of Joan's great work, we put on our
harness and returned to the field and fought for the King all through the
wars and skirmishes until France was freed of the English. It was what
Joan would have desired of us; and, dead or alive, her desire was law for
us. All the survivors of the personal staff were faithful to her memory
and fought for the King to the end. Mainly we were well scattered, but
when Paris fell we happened to be together. It was a great day and a
joyous; but it was a sad one at the same time, because Joan was not there
to march into the captured capital with us.
Noel and I remained always together, and I was by his side when death
claimed him. It was in the last great battle of the war. In that battle
fell also Joan's sturdy old enemy Talbot. He was eighty-five years old,
and had spent his whole life in battle. A fine old lion he was, with his
flowing white mane and his tameless spirit; yes, and his indestructible
energy as well; for he fought as knightly and vigorous a fight that day
as the best man there.
La Hire survived the martyrdom thirteen years; and always fighting, of
course, for that was all he enjoyed in life. I did not see him in all
that time, for we were far apart, but one was always hearing of him.
The Bastard of Orleans and D'Alencon and D'Aulon lived to see France
free, and to testify with Jean and Pierre d'Arc and Pasquerel and me at
the Rehabilitation. But they are all at rest now, these many years. I
alone am left of those who fought at the side of Joan of Arc in the great
wars.
She said I would live until those wars were forgotten--a prophecy which
failed. If I should live a thousand years it would still fail. For
whatsoever had touch with Joan of Arc, that thing is immortal.
Members of Joan's family married, and they have left descendants. Their
descendants are of the nobility, but their family name and blood bring
them honors which no other nobles receive or may hope for. You have seen
how everybody along the way uncovered when those children came yesterday
to pay their duty to me. It was not because they are noble, it is because
they are grandchildren of the brothers of Joan of Arc.
Now as to the Rehabilitation. Joan crowned the King at Rheims. For reward
he allowed her to be hunted to her death without making one effort to
save her. During the next twenty-three years he remained indifferent to
her memory; indifferent to the fact that her good name was under a
damning blot put there by the priest because of the deeds which she had
done in saving him and his scepter; indifferent to the fact that France
was ashamed, and longed to have the Deliverer's fair fame restored.
Indifferent all that time. Then he suddenly changed and was anxious to
have justice for poor Joan himself. Why? Had he become grateful at last?
Had remorse attacked his hard heart? No, he had a better reason--a better
one for his sort of man. This better reason was that, now that the
English had been finally expelled from the country, they were beginning
to call attention to the fact that this King had gotten his crown by the
hands of a person proven by the priests to have been in league with Satan
and burned for it by them as a sorceress--therefore, of what value or
authority was such a Kingship as that? Of no value at all; no nation
could afford to allow such a king to remain on the throne.
It was high time to stir now, and the King did it. That is how Charles
VII. came to be smitten with anxiety to have justice done the memory of
his benefactress.
He appealed to the Pope, and the Pope appointed a great commission of
churchmen to examine into the facts of Joan's life and award judgment.
The Commission sat at Paris, at Domremy, at Rouen, at Orleans, and at
several other places, and continued its work during several months. It
examined the records of Joan's trials, it examined the Bastard of
Orleans, and the Duke d'Alencon, and D'Aulon, and Pasquerel, and
Courcelles, and Isambard de la Pierre, and Manchon, and me, and many
others whose names I have made familiar to you; also they examined more
than a hundred witnesses whose names are less familiar to you--the
friends of Joan in Domremy, Vaucouleurs, Orleans, and other places, and a
number of judges and other people who had assisted at the Rouen trials,
the abjuration, and the martyrdom. And out of this exhaustive examination
Joan's character and history came spotless and perfect, and this verdict
was placed upon record, to remain forever.
I was present upon most of these occasions, and saw again many faces
which I have not seen for a quarter of a century; among them some
well-beloved faces--those of our generals and that of Catherine Boucher
(married, alas!), and also among them certain other faces that filled me
with bitterness--those of Beaupere and Courcelles and a number of their
fellow-fiends. I saw Haumette and Little Mengette--edging along toward
fifty now, and mothers of many children. I saw Noel's father, and the
parents of the Paladin and the Sunflower.
It was beautiful to hear the Duke d'Alencon praise Joan's splendid
capacities as a general, and to hear the Bastard indorse these praises
with his eloquent tongue and then go on and tell how sweet and good Joan
was, and how full of pluck and fire and impetuosity, and mischief, and
mirthfulness, and tenderness, and compassion, and everything that was
pure and fine and noble and lovely. He made her live again before me, and
wrung my heart.
I have finished my story of Joan of Arc, that wonderful child, that
sublime personality, that spirit which in one regard has had no peer and
will have none--this: its purity from all alloy of self-seeking,
self-interest, personal ambition. In it no trace of these motives can be
found, search as you may, and this cannot be said of any other person
whose name appears in profane history.
With Joan of Arc love of country was more than a sentiment--it was a
passion. She was the Genius of Patriotism--she was Patriotism embodied,
concreted, made flesh, and palpable to the touch and visible to the eye.
Love, Mercy, Charity, Fortitude, War, Peace, Poetry, Music--these may be
symbolized as any shall prefer: by figures of either sex and of any age;
but a slender girl in her first young bloom, with the martyr's crown upon
her head, and in her hand the sword that severed her country's
bonds--shall not this, and no other, stand for PATRIOTISM through all the
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,
Volume 2, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
TOM SAWYER, DETECTIVE
CHAPTER I. AN INVITATION FOR TOM AND HUCK
[Footnote: Strange as the incidents of this story are, they are not
inventions, but facts--even to the public confession of the accused. I
take them from an old-time Swedish criminal trial, change the actors, and
transfer the scenes to America. I have added some details, but only a
couple of them are important ones. -- M. T.]
WELL, it was the next spring after me and Tom Sawyer set our old nigger
Jim free, the time he was chained up for a runaway slave down there on
Tom's uncle Silas's farm in Arkansaw. The frost was working out of the
ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer
onto barefoot time every day; and next it would be marble time, and next
mumbletypeg, and next tops and hoops, and next kites, and then right away
it would be summer and going in a-swimming. It just makes a boy homesick
to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets
him to sighing and saddening around, and there's something the matter
with him, he don't know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and
mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the
hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the
big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points
where the timber looks smoky and dim it's so far off and still, and
everything's so solemn it seems like everybody you've loved is dead and
gone, and you 'most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.
Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of
it is. And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what
it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it
so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away
from the same old tedious things you're so used to seeing and so tired
of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a
wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where
everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can't do
that, you'll put up with considerable less; you'll go anywhere you CAN
go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.
Well, me and Tom Sawyer had the spring fever, and had it bad, too; but it
warn't any use to think about Tom trying to get away, because, as he
said, his Aunt Polly wouldn't let him quit school and go traipsing off
somers wasting time; so we was pretty blue. We was setting on the front
steps one day about sundown talking this way, when out comes his aunt
Polly with a letter in her hand and says:
"Tom, I reckon you've got to pack up and go down to Arkansaw--your aunt
Sally wants you."
I 'most jumped out of my skin for joy. I reckoned Tom would fly at his
aunt and hug her head off; but if you believe me he set there like a
rock, and never said a word. It made me fit to cry to see him act so
foolish, with such a noble chance as this opening up. Why, we might lose
it if he didn't speak up and show he was thankful and grateful. But he
set there and studied and studied till I was that distressed I didn't
know what to do; then he says, very ca'm, and I could a shot him for it:
"Well," he says, "I'm right down sorry, Aunt Polly, but I reckon I got to
be excused--for the present."
His aunt Polly was knocked so stupid and so mad at the cold impudence of
it that she couldn't say a word for as much as a half a minute, and this
gave me a chance to nudge Tom and whisper:
"Ain't you got any sense? Sp'iling such a noble chance as this and
throwing it away?"
But he warn't disturbed. He mumbled back:
"Huck Finn, do you want me to let her SEE how bad I want to go? Why,
she'd begin to doubt, right away, and imagine a lot of sicknesses and
dangers and objections, and first you know she'd take it all back. You
lemme alone; I reckon I know how to work her."
Now I never would 'a' thought of that. But he was right. Tom Sawyer was
always right--the levelest head I ever see, and always AT himself and
ready for anything you might spring on him. By this time his aunt Polly
was all straight again, and she let fly. She says:
"You'll be excused! YOU will! Well, I never heard the like of it in all
my days! The idea of you talking like that to ME! Now take yourself off
and pack your traps; and if I hear another word out of you about what
you'll be excused from and what you won't, I lay I'LL excuse you--with a
hickory!"
She hit his head a thump with her thimble as we dodged by, and he let on
to be whimpering as we struck for the stairs. Up in his room he hugged
me, he was so out of his head for gladness because he was going
traveling. And he says:
"Before we get away she'll wish she hadn't let me go, but she won't know
any way to get around it now. After what she's said, her pride won't let
her take it back."
Tom was packed in ten minutes, all except what his aunt and Mary would
finish up for him; then we waited ten more for her to get cooled down and
sweet and gentle again; for Tom said it took her ten minutes to unruffle
in times when half of her feathers was up, but twenty when they was all
up, and this was one of the times when they was all up. Then we went
down, being in a sweat to know what the letter said.
She was setting there in a brown study, with it laying in her lap. We
set down, and she says:
"They're in considerable trouble down there, and they think you and
Huck'll be a kind of diversion for them--'comfort,' they say. Much of
that they'll get out of you and Huck Finn, I reckon. There's a neighbor
named Brace Dunlap that's been wanting to marry their Benny for three
months, and at last they told him point blank and once for all, he
COULDN'T; so he has soured on them, and they're worried about it. I
reckon he's somebody they think they better be on the good side of, for
they've tried to please him by hiring his no-account brother to help on
the farm when they can't hardly afford it, and don't want him around
anyhow. Who are the Dunlaps?"
"They live about a mile from Uncle Silas's place, Aunt Polly--all the
farmers live about a mile apart down there--and Brace Dunlap is a long
sight richer than any of the others, and owns a whole grist of niggers.
He's a widower, thirty-six years old, without any children, and is proud
of his money and overbearing, and everybody is a little afraid of him. I
judge he thought he could have any girl he wanted, just for the asking,
and it must have set him back a good deal when he found he couldn't get
Benny. Why, Benny's only half as old as he is, and just as sweet and
lovely as--well, you've seen her. Poor old Uncle Silas--why, it's
pitiful, him trying to curry favor that way--so hard pushed and poor, and
yet hiring that useless Jubiter Dunlap to please his ornery brother."
"What a name--Jubiter! Where'd he get it?"
"It's only just a nickname. I reckon they've forgot his real name long
before this. He's twenty-seven, now, and has had it ever since the first
time he ever went in swimming. The school teacher seen a round brown
mole the size of a dime on his left leg above his knee, and four little
bits of moles around it, when he was naked, and he said it minded him of
Jubiter and his moons; and the children thought it was funny, and so they
got to calling him Jubiter, and he's Jubiter yet. He's tall, and lazy,
and sly, and sneaky, and ruther cowardly, too, but kind of good-natured,
and wears long brown hair and no beard, and hasn't got a cent, and Brace
boards him for nothing, and gives him his old clothes to wear, and
despises him. Jubiter is a twin."
"What's t'other twin like?"
"Just exactly like Jubiter--so they say; used to was, anyway, but he
hain't been seen for seven years. He got to robbing when he was nineteen
or twenty, and they jailed him; but he broke jail and got away--up North
here, somers. They used to hear about him robbing and burglaring now and
then, but that was years ago. He's dead, now. At least that's what they
say. They don't hear about him any more."
"What was his name?"
"Jake."
There wasn't anything more said for a considerable while; the old lady
was thinking. At last she says:
"The thing that is mostly worrying your aunt Sally is the tempers that
that man Jubiter gets your uncle into."
Tom was astonished, and so was I. Tom says:
"Tempers? Uncle Silas? Land, you must be joking! I didn't know he HAD any
temper."
"Works him up into perfect rages, your aunt Sally says; says he acts as
if he would really hit the man, sometimes."
"Aunt Polly, it beats anything I ever heard of. Why, he's just as gentle
as mush."
"Well, she's worried, anyway. Says your uncle Silas is like a changed
man, on account of all this quarreling. And the neighbors talk about it,
and lay all the blame on your uncle, of course, because he's a preacher
and hain't got any business to quarrel. Your aunt Sally says he hates to
go into the pulpit he's so ashamed; and the people have begun to cool
toward him, and he ain't as popular now as he used to was."
"Well, ain't it strange? Why, Aunt Polly, he was always so good and kind
and moony and absent-minded and chuckle-headed and lovable--why, he was
just an angel! What CAN be the matter of him, do you reckon?"
CHAPTER II. JAKE DUNLAP
WE had powerful good luck; because we got a chance in a stern-wheeler
from away North which was bound for one of them bayous or one-horse
rivers away down Louisiana way, and so we could go all the way down the
Upper Mississippi and all the way down the Lower Mississippi to that farm
in Arkansaw without having to change steamboats at St. Louis; not so very
much short of a thousand miles at one pull.
A pretty lonesome boat; there warn't but few passengers, and all old
folks, that set around, wide apart, dozing, and was very quiet. We was
four days getting out of the "upper river," because we got aground so
much. But it warn't dull--couldn't be for boys that was traveling, of
course.
From the very start me and Tom allowed that there was somebody sick in
the stateroom next to ourn, because the meals was always toted in there
by the waiters. By and by we asked about it--Tom did and the waiter said
it was a man, but he didn't look sick.
"Well, but AIN'T he sick?"
"I don't know; maybe he is, but 'pears to me he's just letting on."
"What makes you think that?"
"Because if he was sick he would pull his clothes off SOME time or
other--don't you reckon he would? Well, this one don't. At least he don't
ever pull off his boots, anyway."
"The mischief he don't! Not even when he goes to bed?"
"No."
It was always nuts for Tom Sawyer--a mystery was. If you'd lay out a
mystery and a pie before me and him, you wouldn't have to say take your
choice; it was a thing that would regulate itself. Because in my nature
I have always run to pie, whilst in his nature he has always run to
mystery. People are made different. And it is the best way. Tom says to
the waiter:
"What's the man's name?"
"Phillips."
"Where'd he come aboard?"
"I think he got aboard at Elexandria, up on the Iowa line."
"What do you reckon he's a-playing?"
"I hain't any notion--I never thought of it."
I says to myself, here's another one that runs to pie.
"Anything peculiar about him?--the way he acts or talks?"
"No--nothing, except he seems so scary, and keeps his doors locked night
and day both, and when you knock he won't let you in till he opens the
door a crack and sees who it is."
"By jimminy, it's int'resting! I'd like to get a look at him. Say--the
next time you're going in there, don't you reckon you could spread the
door and--"
"No, indeedy! He's always behind it. He would block that game."
Tom studied over it, and then he says:
"Looky here. You lend me your apern and let me take him his breakfast in
the morning. I'll give you a quarter."
The boy was plenty willing enough, if the head steward wouldn't mind.
Tom says that's all right, he reckoned he could fix it with the head
steward; and he done it. He fixed it so as we could both go in with
aperns on and toting vittles.
He didn't sleep much, he was in such a sweat to get in there and find out
the mystery about Phillips; and moreover he done a lot of guessing about
it all night, which warn't no use, for if you are going to find out the
facts of a thing, what's the sense in guessing out what ain't the facts
and wasting ammunition? I didn't lose no sleep. I wouldn't give a dern
to know what's the matter of Phillips, I says to myself.
Well, in the morning we put on the aperns and got a couple of trays of
truck, and Tom he knocked on the door. The man opened it a crack, and
then he let us in and shut it quick. By Jackson, when we got a sight of
him, we 'most dropped the trays! and Tom says:
"Why, Jubiter Dunlap, where'd YOU come from?"
Well, the man was astonished, of course; and first off he looked like he
didn't know whether to be scared, or glad, or both, or which, but finally
he settled down to being glad; and then his color come back, though at
first his face had turned pretty white. So we got to talking together
while he et his breakfast. And he says:
"But I aint Jubiter Dunlap. I'd just as soon tell you who I am, though,
if you'll swear to keep mum, for I ain't no Phillips, either."
Tom says:
"We'll keep mum, but there ain't any need to tell who you are if you
ain't Jubiter Dunlap."
"Why?"
"Because if you ain't him you're t'other twin, Jake. You're the spit'n
image of Jubiter."
"Well, I'm Jake. But looky here, how do you come to know us Dunlaps?"
Tom told about the adventures we'd had down there at his uncle Silas's
last summer, and when he see that there warn't anything about his
folks--or him either, for that matter--that we didn't know, he opened out
and talked perfectly free and candid. He never made any bones about his
own case; said he'd been a hard lot, was a hard lot yet, and reckoned
he'd be a hard lot plumb to the end. He said of course it was a
dangerous life, and--He give a kind of gasp, and set his head like a
person that's listening. We didn't say anything, and so it was very
still for a second or so, and there warn't no sounds but the screaking of
the woodwork and the chug-chugging of the machinery down below.
Then we got him comfortable again, telling him about his people, and how
Brace's wife had been dead three years, and Brace wanted to marry Benny
and she shook him, and Jubiter was working for Uncle Silas, and him and
Uncle Silas quarreling all the time--and then he let go and laughed.
"Land!" he says, "it's like old times to hear all this tittle-tattle, and
does me good. It's been seven years and more since I heard any. How do
they talk about me these days?"
"Who?"
"The farmers--and the family."
"Why, they don't talk about you at all--at least only just a mention,
once in a long time."
"The nation!" he says, surprised; "why is that?"
"Because they think you are dead long ago."
"No! Are you speaking true?--honor bright, now." He jumped up, excited.
"Honor bright. There ain't anybody thinks you are alive."
"Then I'm saved, I'm saved, sure! I'll go home. They'll hide me and save
my life. You keep mum. Swear you'll keep mum--swear you'll never, never
tell on me. Oh, boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted day
and night, and dasn't show his face! I've never done you any harm; I'll
never do you any, as God is in the heavens; swear you'll be good to me
and help me save my life."
We'd a swore it if he'd been a dog; and so we done it. Well, he couldn't
love us enough for it or be grateful enough, poor cuss; it was all he
could do to keep from hugging us.
We talked along, and he got out a little hand-bag and begun to open it,
and told us to turn our backs. We done it, and when he told us to turn
again he was perfectly different to what he was before. He had on blue
goggles and the naturalest-looking long brown whiskers and mustashes you
ever see. His own mother wouldn't 'a' knowed him. He asked us if he
looked like his brother Jubiter, now.
"No," Tom said; "there ain't anything left that's like him except the
long hair."
"All right, I'll get that cropped close to my head before I get there;
then him and Brace will keep my secret, and I'll live with them as being
a stranger, and the neighbors won't ever guess me out. What do you
think?"
Tom he studied awhile, then he says:
"Well, of course me and Huck are going to keep mum there, but if you
don't keep mum yourself there's going to be a little bit of a risk--it
ain't much, maybe, but it's a little. I mean, if you talk, won't people
notice that your voice is just like Jubiter's; and mightn't it make them
think of the twin they reckoned was dead, but maybe after all was hid all
this time under another name?"
"By George," he says, "you're a sharp one! You're perfectly right. I've
got to play deef and dumb when there's a neighbor around. If I'd a
struck for home and forgot that little detail--However, I wasn't striking
for home. I was breaking for any place where I could get away from these
fellows that are after me; then I was going to put on this disguise and
get some different clothes, and--"
He jumped for the outside door and laid his ear against it and listened,
pale and kind of panting. Presently he whispers:
"Sounded like cocking a gun! Lord, what a life to lead!"
Then he sunk down in a chair all limp and sick like, and wiped the sweat
off of his face.
CHAPTER III. A DIAMOND ROBBERY
FROM that time out, we was with him 'most all the time, and one or
t'other of us slept in his upper berth. He said he had been so lonesome,
and it was such a comfort to him to have company, and somebody to talk to
in his troubles. We was in a sweat to find out what his secret was, but
Tom said the best way was not to seem anxious, then likely he would drop
into it himself in one of his talks, but if we got to asking questions he
would get suspicious and shet up his shell. It turned out just so. It
warn't no trouble to see that he WANTED to talk about it, but always
along at first he would scare away from it when he got on the very edge
of it, and go to talking about something else. The way it come about was
this: He got to asking us, kind of indifferent like, about the passengers
down on deck. We told him about them. But he warn't satisfied; we warn't
particular enough. He told us to describe them better. Tom done it. At
last, when Tom was describing one of the roughest and raggedest ones, he
gave a shiver and a gasp and says:
"Oh, lordy, that's one of them! They're aboard sure--I just knowed it.
I sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on."
Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger, he
give that shiver again and says:
"That's him!--that's the other one. If it would only come a good black
stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they've got spies on me.
They've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard,
and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me--porter
or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me,
they would know it inside of an hour."
So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was
telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come
to that place he went right along. He says:
"It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St. Louis.
What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as
hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine,
and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di'monds sent
to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was examining
them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and THEM was the things that
went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite fine enough for
twelve thousand dollars."
"Twelve-thousand-dollars!" Tom says. "Was they really worth all that
money, do you reckon?"
"Every cent of it."
"And you fellows got away with them?"
"As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery people know they've been
robbed yet. But it wouldn't be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of
course, so we considered where we'd go. One was for going one way, one
another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi won.
We done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put it in
the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either of us
have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then we went
down town, each by his own self--because I reckon maybe we all had the
same notion. I don't know for certain, but I reckon maybe we had."
"What notion?" Tom says.
"To rob the others."
"What--one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?"
"Cert'nly."
It disgusted Tom Sawyer, and he said it was the orneriest, low-downest
thing he ever heard of. But Jake Dunlap said it warn't unusual in the
profession. Said when a person was in that line of business he'd got to
look out for his own intrust, there warn't nobody else going to do it for
him. And then he went on. He says:
"You see, the trouble was, you couldn't divide up two di'monds amongst
three. If there'd been three--But never mind about that, there warn't
three. I loafed along the back streets studying and studying. And I
says to myself, I'll hog them di'monds the first chance I get, and I'll
have a disguise all ready, and I'll give the boys the slip, and when I'm
safe away I'll put it on, and then let them find me if they can. So I
got the false whiskers and the goggles and this countrified suit of
clothes, and fetched them along back in a hand-bag; and when I was
passing a shop where they sell all sorts of things, I got a glimpse of
one of my pals through the window. It was Bud Dixon. I was glad, you
bet. I says to myself, I'll see what he buys. So I kept shady, and
watched. Now what do you reckon it was he bought?"
"Whiskers?" said I.
"No."
"Goggles?"
"No."
"Oh, keep still, Huck Finn, can't you, you're only just hendering all you
can. What WAS it he bought, Jake?"
"You'd never guess in the world. It was only just a screwdriver--just a
wee little bit of a screwdriver."
"Well, I declare! What did he want with that?"
"That's what I thought. It was curious. It clean stumped me. I says to
myself, what can he want with that thing? Well, when he come out I stood
back out of sight, and then tracked him to a second-hand slop-shop and
see him buy a red flannel shirt and some old ragged clothes--just the
ones he's got on now, as you've described. Then I went down to the wharf
and hid my things aboard the up-river boat that we had picked out, and
then started back and had another streak of luck. I seen our other pal
lay in HIS stock of old rusty second-handers. We got the di'monds and
went aboard the boat.
"But now we was up a stump, for we couldn't go to bed. We had to set up
and watch one another. Pity, that was; pity to put that kind of a strain
on us, because there was bad blood between us from a couple of weeks
back, and we was only friends in the way of business. Bad anyway, seeing
there was only two di'monds betwixt three men. First we had supper, and
then tramped up and down the deck together smoking till most midnight;
then we went and set down in my stateroom and locked the doors and looked
in the piece of paper to see if the di'monds was all right, then laid it
on the lower berth right in full sight; and there we set, and set, and
by-and-by it got to be dreadful hard to keep awake. At last Bud Dixon he
dropped off. As soon as he was snoring a good regular gait that was
likely to last, and had his chin on his breast and looked permanent, Hal
Clayton nodded towards the di'monds and then towards the outside door,
and I understood. I reached and got the paper, and then we stood up and
waited perfectly still; Bud never stirred; I turned the key of the
outside door very soft and slow, then turned the knob the same way, and
we went tiptoeing out onto the guard, and shut the door very soft and
gentle.
"There warn't nobody stirring anywhere, and the boat was slipping along,
swift and steady, through the big water in the smoky moonlight. We never
said a word, but went straight up onto the hurricane-deck and plumb back
aft, and set down on the end of the sky-light. Both of us knowed what
that meant, without having to explain to one another. Bud Dixon would
wake up and miss the swag, and would come straight for us, for he ain't
afeard of anything or anybody, that man ain't. He would come, and we
would heave him overboard, or get killed trying. It made me shiver,
because I ain't as brave as some people, but if I showed the white
feather--well, I knowed better than do that. I kind of hoped the boat
would land somers, and we could skip ashore and not have to run the risk
of this row, I was so scared of Bud Dixon, but she was an upper-river tub
and there warn't no real chance of that.
"Well, the time strung along and along, and that fellow never come! Why,
it strung along till dawn begun to break, and still he never come.
'Thunder,' I says, 'what do you make out of this?--ain't it suspicious?'
'Land!' Hal says, 'do you reckon he's playing us?--open the paper!' I
done it, and by gracious there warn't anything in it but a couple of
little pieces of loaf-sugar! THAT'S the reason he could set there and
snooze all night so comfortable. Smart? Well, I reckon! He had had them
two papers all fixed and ready, and he had put one of them in place of
t'other right under our noses.
"We felt pretty cheap. But the thing to do, straight off, was to make a
plan; and we done it. We would do up the paper again, just as it was,
and slip in, very elaborate and soft, and lay it on the bunk again, and
let on WE didn't know about any trick, and hadn't any idea he was
a-laughing at us behind them bogus snores of his'n; and we would stick by
him, and the first night we was ashore we would get him drunk and search
him, and get the di'monds; and DO for him, too, if it warn't too risky.
If we got the swag, we'd GOT to do for him, or he would hunt us down and
do for us, sure. But I didn't have no real hope. I knowed we could get
him drunk--he was always ready for that--but what's the good of it? You
might search him a year and never find--Well, right there I catched my
breath and broke off my thought! For an idea went ripping through my head
that tore my brains to rags--and land, but I felt gay and good! You see,
I had had my boots off, to unswell my feet, and just then I took up one
of them to put it on, and I catched a glimpse of the heel-bottom, and it
just took my breath away. You remember about that puzzlesome little
screwdriver?"
"You bet I do," says Tom, all excited.
"Well, when I catched that glimpse of that boot heel, the idea that went
smashing through my head was, I know where he's hid the di'monds! You
look at this boot heel, now. See, it's bottomed with a steel plate, and
the plate is fastened on with little screws. Now there wasn't a screw
about that feller anywhere but in his boot heels; so, if he needed a
screwdriver, I reckoned I knowed why."
"Huck, ain't it bully!" says Tom.
"Well, I got my boots on, and we went down and slipped in and laid the
paper of sugar on the berth, and sat down soft and sheepish and went to
listening to Bud Dixon snore. Hal Clayton dropped off pretty soon, but I
didn't; I wasn't ever so wide awake in my life. I was spying out from
under the shade of my hat brim, searching the floor for leather. It took
me a long time, and I begun to think maybe my guess was wrong, but at
last I struck it. It laid over by the bulkhead, and was nearly the color
of the carpet. It was a little round plug about as thick as the end of
your little finger, and I says to myself there's a di'mond in the nest
you've come from. Before long I spied out the plug's mate.
"Think of the smartness and coolness of that blatherskite! He put up that
scheme on us and reasoned out what we would do, and we went ahead and
done it perfectly exact, like a couple of pudd'nheads. He set there and
took his own time to unscrew his heelplates and cut out his plugs and
stick in the di'monds and screw on his plates again. He allowed we would
steal the bogus swag and wait all night for him to come up and get
drownded, and by George it's just what we done! I think it was powerful
smart."
"You bet your life it was!" says Tom, just full of admiration.
CHAPTER IV. THE THREE SLEEPERS
WELL, all day we went through the humbug of watching one another, and it
was pretty sickly business for two of us and hard to act out, I can tell
you. About night we landed at one of them little Missouri towns high up
toward Iowa, and had supper at the tavern, and got a room upstairs with a
cot and a double bed in it, but I dumped my bag under a deal table in the
dark hall while we was moving along it to bed, single file, me last, and
the landlord in the lead with a tallow candle. We had up a lot of whisky,
and went to playing high-low-jack for dimes, and as soon as the whisky
begun to take hold of Bud we stopped drinking, but we didn't let him
stop. We loaded him till he fell out of his chair and laid there snoring.
"We was ready for business now. I said we better pull our boots off, and
his'n too, and not make any noise, then we could pull him and haul him
around and ransack him without any trouble. So we done it. I set my
boots and Bud's side by side, where they'd be handy. Then we stripped him
and searched his seams and his pockets and his socks and the inside of
his boots, and everything, and searched his bundle. Never found any
di'monds. We found the screwdriver, and Hal says, 'What do you reckon he
wanted with that?' I said I didn't know; but when he wasn't looking I
hooked it. At last Hal he looked beat and discouraged, and said we'd got
to give it up. That was what I was waiting for. I says:
"'There's one place we hain't searched.'
"'What place is that?' he says.
"'His stomach.'
"'By gracious, I never thought of that! NOW we're on the homestretch, to
a dead moral certainty. How'll we manage?'
"'Well,' I says, 'just stay by him till I turn out and hunt up a drug
store, and I reckon I'll fetch something that'll make them di'monds tired
of the company they're keeping.'
"He said that's the ticket, and with him looking straight at me I slid
myself into Bud's boots instead of my own, and he never noticed. They
was just a shade large for me, but that was considerable better than
being too small. I got my bag as I went a-groping through the hall, and
in about a minute I was out the back way and stretching up the river road
at a five-mile gait.
"And not feeling so very bad, neither--walking on di'monds don't have no
such effect. When I had gone fifteen minutes I says to myself, there's
more'n a mile behind me, and everything quiet. Another five minutes and
I says there's considerable more land behind me now, and there's a man
back there that's begun to wonder what's the trouble. Another five and I
says to myself he's getting real uneasy--he's walking the floor now.
Another five, and I says to myself, there's two mile and a half behind
me, and he's AWFUL uneasy--beginning to cuss, I reckon. Pretty soon I
says to myself, forty minutes gone--he KNOWS there's something up! Fifty
minutes--the truth's a-busting on him now! he is reckoning I found the
di'monds whilst we was searching, and shoved them in my pocket and never
let on--yes, and he's starting out to hunt for me. He'll hunt for new
tracks in the dust, and they'll as likely send him down the river as up.
"Just then I see a man coming down on a mule, and before I thought I
jumped into the bush. It was stupid! When he got abreast he stopped and
waited a little for me to come out; then he rode on again. But I didn't
feel gay any more. I says to myself I've botched my chances by that; I
surely have, if he meets up with Hal Clayton.
"Well, about three in the morning I fetched Elexandria and see this
stern-wheeler laying there, and was very glad, because I felt perfectly
safe, now, you know. It was just daybreak. I went aboard and got this
stateroom and put on these clothes and went up in the pilot-house--to
watch, though I didn't reckon there was any need of it. I set there and
played with my di'monds and waited and waited for the boat to start, but
she didn't. You see, they was mending her machinery, but I didn't know
anything about it, not being very much used to steamboats.
"Well, to cut the tale short, we never left there till plumb noon; and
long before that I was hid in this stateroom; for before breakfast I see
a man coming, away off, that had a gait like Hal Clayton's, and it made
me just sick. I says to myself, if he finds out I'm aboard this boat,
he's got me like a rat in a trap. All he's got to do is to have me
watched, and wait--wait till I slip ashore, thinking he is a thousand
miles away, then slip after me and dog me to a good place and make me
give up the di'monds, and then he'll--oh, I know what he'll do! Ain't it
awful--awful! And now to think the OTHER one's aboard, too! Oh, ain't it
hard luck, boys--ain't it hard! But you'll help save me, WON'T you?--oh,
boys, be good to a poor devil that's being hunted to death, and save
me--I'll worship the very ground you walk on!"
We turned in and soothed him down and told him we would plan for him and
help him, and he needn't be so afeard; and so by and by he got to feeling
kind of comfortable again, and unscrewed his heelplates and held up his
di'monds this way and that, admiring them and loving them; and when the
light struck into them they WAS beautiful, sure; why, they seemed to kind
of bust, and snap fire out all around. But all the same I judged he was
a fool. If I had been him I would a handed the di'monds to them pals and
got them to go ashore and leave me alone. But he was made different. He
said it was a whole fortune and he couldn't bear the idea.
Twice we stopped to fix the machinery and laid a good while, once in the
night; but it wasn't dark enough, and he was afeard to skip. But the
third time we had to fix it there was a better chance. We laid up at a
country woodyard about forty mile above Uncle Silas's place a little
after one at night, and it was thickening up and going to storm. So Jake
he laid for a chance to slide. We begun to take in wood. Pretty soon
the rain come a-drenching down, and the wind blowed hard. Of course
every boat-hand fixed a gunny sack and put it on like a bonnet, the way
they do when they are toting wood, and we got one for Jake, and he
slipped down aft with his hand-bag and come tramping forrard just like
the rest, and walked ashore with them, and when we see him pass out of
the light of the torch-basket and get swallowed up in the dark, we got
our breath again and just felt grateful and splendid. But it wasn't for
long. Somebody told, I reckon; for in about eight or ten minutes them
two pals come tearing forrard as tight as they could jump and darted
ashore and was gone. We waited plumb till dawn for them to come back,
and kept hoping they would, but they never did. We was awful sorry and
low-spirited. All the hope we had was that Jake had got such a start that
they couldn't get on his track, and he would get to his brother's and
hide there and be safe.
He was going to take the river road, and told us to find out if Brace and
Jubiter was to home and no strangers there, and then slip out about
sundown and tell him. Said he would wait for us in a little bunch of
sycamores right back of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river
road, a lonesome place.
We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was all
right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't
likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they
would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him
when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.
CHAPTER V. A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS
WE didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the
afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we
never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight as
we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till we
could go to Brace's and find out how things was there. It was getting
pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and
panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of
us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard two
or three terrible screams for help. "Poor Jake is killed, sure," we says.
We was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker field and
hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we
skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the bunch
they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up the road as
tight as they could go, two chasing two.
We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but
didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking
of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like
being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon
come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and
bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars,
and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it was
miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All
of a sudden Tom whispers:
"Look!--what's that?"
"Don't!" I says. "Don't take a person by surprise that way. I'm 'most
ready to die, anyway, without you doing that."
"Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of the sycamores."
"Don't, Tom!"
"It's terrible tall!"
"Oh, lordy-lordy! let's--"
"Keep still--it's a-coming this way."
He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I had to
look. I couldn't help it. So now we was both on our knees with our chins
on a fence rail and gazing--yes, and gasping too. It was coming down the
road--coming in the shadder of the trees, and you couldn't see it good;
not till it was pretty close to us; then it stepped into a bright splotch
of moonlight and we sunk right down in our tracks--it was Jake Dunlap's
ghost! That was what we said to ourselves.
We couldn't stir for a minute or two; then it was gone We talked about it
in low voices. Tom says:
"They're mostly dim and smoky, or like they're made out of fog, but this
one wasn't."
"No," I says; "I seen the goggles and the whiskers perfectly plain."
"Yes, and the very colors in them loud countrified Sunday clothes--plaid
breeches, green and black--"
"Cotton velvet westcot, fire-red and yaller squares--"
"Leather straps to the bottoms of the breeches legs and one of them
hanging unbottoned--"
"Yes, and that hat--"
"What a hat for a ghost to wear!"
You see it was the first season anybody wore that kind--a black
stiff-brim stove-pipe, very high, and not smooth, with a round top--just
like a sugar-loaf.
"Did you notice if its hair was the same, Huck?"
"No--seems to me I did, then again it seems to me I didn't."
"I didn't either; but it had its bag along, I noticed that."
"So did I. How can there be a ghost-bag, Tom?"
"Sho! I wouldn't be as ignorant as that if I was you, Huck Finn.
Whatever a ghost has, turns to ghost-stuff. They've got to have their
things, like anybody else. You see, yourself, that its clothes was turned
to ghost-stuff. Well, then, what's to hender its bag from turning, too?
Of course it done it."
That was reasonable. I couldn't find no fault with it. Bill Withers and
his brother Jack come along by, talking, and Jack says:
"What do you reckon he was toting?"
"I dunno; but it was pretty heavy."
"Yes, all he could lug. Nigger stealing corn from old Parson Silas, I
judged."
"So did I. And so I allowed I wouldn't let on to see him."
"That's me, too."
Then they both laughed, and went on out of hearing. It showed how
unpopular old Uncle Silas had got to be now. They wouldn't 'a' let a
nigger steal anybody else's corn and never done anything to him.
We heard some more voices mumbling along towards us and getting louder,
and sometimes a cackle of a laugh. It was Lem Beebe and Jim Lane. Jim
Lane says:
"Who?--Jubiter Dunlap?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I don't know. I reckon so. I seen him spading up some ground along
about an hour ago, just before sundown--him and the parson. Said he
guessed he wouldn't go to-night, but we could have his dog if we wanted
him."
"Too tired, I reckon."
"Yes--works so hard!"
"Oh, you bet!"
They cackled at that, and went on by. Tom said we better jump out and
tag along after them, because they was going our way and it wouldn't be
comfortable to run across the ghost all by ourselves. So we done it, and
got home all right.
That night was the second of September--a Saturday. I sha'n't ever forget
it. You'll see why, pretty soon.
CHAPTER VI. PLANS TO SECURE THE DIAMONDS
WE tramped along behind Jim and Lem till we come to the back stile where
old Jim's cabin was that he was captivated in, the time we set him free,
and here come the dogs piling around us to say howdy, and there was the
lights of the house, too; so we warn't afeard any more, and was going to
climb over, but Tom says:
"Hold on; set down here a minute. By George!"
"What's the matter?" says I.
"Matter enough!" he says. "Wasn't you expecting we would be the first to
tell the family who it is that's been killed yonder in the sycamores, and
all about them rapscallions that done it, and about the di'monds they've
smouched off of the corpse, and paint it up fine, and have the glory of
being the ones that knows a lot more about it than anybody else?"
"Why, of course. It wouldn't be you, Tom Sawyer, if you was to let such
a chance go by. I reckon it ain't going to suffer none for lack of
paint," I says, "when you start in to scollop the facts."
"Well, now," he says, perfectly ca'm, "what would you say if I was to
tell you I ain't going to start in at all?"
I was astonished to hear him talk so. I says:
"I'd say it's a lie. You ain't in earnest, Tom Sawyer?"
"You'll soon see. Was the ghost barefooted?"
"No, it wasn't. What of it?"
"You wait--I'll show you what. Did it have its boots on?"
"Yes. I seen them plain."
"Swear it?"
"Yes, I swear it."
"So do I. Now do you know what that means?"
"No. What does it mean?"
"Means that them thieves DIDN'T GET THE DI'MONDS."
"Jimminy! What makes you think that?"
"I don't only think it, I know it. Didn't the breeches and goggles and
whiskers and hand-bag and every blessed thing turn to ghost-stuff?
Everything it had on turned, didn't it? It shows that the reason its
boots turned too was because it still had them on after it started to go
ha'nting around, and if that ain't proof that them blatherskites didn't
get the boots, I'd like to know what you'd CALL proof."
Think of that now. I never see such a head as that boy had. Why, I had
eyes and I could see things, but they never meant nothing to me. But Tom
Sawyer was different. When Tom Sawyer seen a thing it just got up on its
hind legs and TALKED to him--told him everything it knowed. I never see
such a head.
"Tom Sawyer," I says, "I'll say it again as I've said it a many a time
before: I ain't fitten to black your boots. But that's all right--that's
neither here nor there. God Almighty made us all, and some He gives eyes
that's blind, and some He gives eyes that can see, and I reckon it ain't
none of our lookout what He done it for; it's all right, or He'd 'a'
fixed it some other way. Go on--I see plenty plain enough, now, that them
thieves didn't get way with the di'monds. Why didn't they, do you
reckon?"
"Because they got chased away by them other two men before they could
pull the boots off of the corpse."
"That's so! I see it now. But looky here, Tom, why ain't we to go and
tell about it?"
"Oh, shucks, Huck Finn, can't you see? Look at it. What's a-going to
happen? There's going to be an inquest in the morning. Them two men will
tell how they heard the yells and rushed there just in time to not save
the stranger. Then the jury'll twaddle and twaddle and twaddle, and
finally they'll fetch in a verdict that he got shot or stuck or busted
over the head with something, and come to his death by the inspiration of
God. And after they've buried him they'll auction off his things for to
pay the expenses, and then's OUR chance." "How, Tom?"
"Buy the boots for two dollars!"
Well, it 'most took my breath.
"My land! Why, Tom, WE'LL get the di'monds!"
"You bet. Some day there'll be a big reward offered for them--a thousand
dollars, sure. That's our money! Now we'll trot in and see the folks.
And mind you we don't know anything about any murder, or any di'monds, or
any thieves--don't you forget that."
I had to sigh a little over the way he had got it fixed. I'd 'a' SOLD
them di'monds--yes, sir--for twelve thousand dollars; but I didn't say
anything. It wouldn't done any good. I says:
"But what are we going to tell your aunt Sally has made us so long
getting down here from the village, Tom?"
"Oh, I'll leave that to you," he says. "I reckon you can explain it
somehow."
He was always just that strict and delicate. He never would tell a lie
himself.
We struck across the big yard, noticing this, that, and t'other thing
that was so familiar, and we so glad to see it again, and when we got to
the roofed big passageway betwixt the double log house and the kitchen
part, there was everything hanging on the wall just as it used to was,
even to Uncle Silas's old faded green baize working-gown with the hood to
it, and raggedy white patch between the shoulders that always looked like
somebody had hit him with a snowball; and then we lifted the latch and
walked in. Aunt Sally she was just a-ripping and a-tearing around, and
the children was huddled in one corner, and the old man he was huddled in
the other and praying for help in time of need. She jumped for us with
joy and tears running down her face and give us a whacking box on the
ear, and then hugged us and kissed us and boxed us again, and just
couldn't seem to get enough of it, she was so glad to see us; and she
says:
"Where HAVE you been a-loafing to, you good-for-nothing trash! I've been
that worried about you I didn't know what to do. Your traps has been
here ever so long, and I've had supper cooked fresh about four times so
as to have it hot and good when you come, till at last my patience is
just plumb wore out, and I declare I--I--why I could skin you alive! You
must be starving, poor things!--set down, set down, everybody; don't lose
no more time."
It was good to be there again behind all that noble corn-pone and
spareribs, and everything that you could ever want in this world. Old
Uncle Silas he peeled off one of his bulliest old-time blessings, with as
many layers to it as an onion, and whilst the angels was hauling in the
slack of it I was trying to study up what to say about what kept us so
long. When our plates was all loadened and we'd got a-going, she asked
me, and I says:
"Well, you see,--er--Mizzes--"
"Huck Finn! Since when am I Mizzes to you? Have I ever been stingy of
cuffs or kisses for you since the day you stood in this room and I took
you for Tom Sawyer and blessed God for sending you to me, though you told
me four thousand lies and I believed every one of them like a simpleton?
Call me Aunt Sally--like you always done."
So I done it. And I says:
"Well, me and Tom allowed we would come along afoot and take a smell of
the woods, and we run across Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, and they asked us to
go with them blackberrying to-night, and said they could borrow Jubiter
Dunlap's dog, because he had told them just that minute--"
"Where did they see him?" says the old man; and when I looked up to see
how HE come to take an intrust in a little thing like that, his eyes was
just burning into me, he was that eager. It surprised me so it kind of
throwed me off, but I pulled myself together again and says:
"It was when he was spading up some ground along with you, towards
sundown or along there."
He only said, "Um," in a kind of a disappointed way, and didn't take no
more intrust. So I went on. I says:
"Well, then, as I was a-saying--"
"That'll do, you needn't go no furder." It was Aunt Sally. She was boring
right into me with her eyes, and very indignant. "Huck Finn," she says,
"how'd them men come to talk about going a-black-berrying in
September--in THIS region?"
I see I had slipped up, and I couldn't say a word. She waited, still
a-gazing at me, then she says:
"And how'd they come to strike that idiot idea of going a-blackberrying
in the night?"
"Well, m'm, they--er--they told us they had a lantern, and--"
"Oh, SHET up--do! Looky here; what was they going to do with a dog?--hunt
blackberries with it?"
"I think, m'm, they--"
"Now, Tom Sawyer, what kind of a lie are you fixing YOUR mouth to
contribit to this mess of rubbage? Speak out--and I warn you before you
begin, that I don't believe a word of it. You and Huck's been up to
something you no business to--I know it perfectly well; I know you, BOTH
of you. Now you explain that dog, and them blackberries, and the lantern,
and the rest of that rot--and mind you talk as straight as a string--do
you hear?"
Tom he looked considerable hurt, and says, very dignified:
"It is a pity if Huck is to be talked to that way, just for making a
little bit of a mistake that anybody could make."
"What mistake has he made?"
"Why, only the mistake of saying blackberries when of course he meant
strawberries."
"Tom Sawyer, I lay if you aggravate me a little more, I'll--"
"Aunt Sally, without knowing it--and of course without intending it--you
are in the wrong. If you'd 'a' studied natural history the way you
ought, you would know that all over the world except just here in
Arkansaw they ALWAYS hunt strawberries with a dog--and a lantern--"
But she busted in on him there and just piled into him and snowed him
under. She was so mad she couldn't get the words out fast enough, and
she gushed them out in one everlasting freshet. That was what Tom Sawyer
was after. He allowed to work her up and get her started and then leave
her alone and let her burn herself out. Then she would be so aggravated
with that subject that she wouldn't say another word about it, nor let
anybody else. Well, it happened just so. When she was tuckered out and
had to hold up, he says, quite ca'm:
"And yet, all the same, Aunt Sally--"
"Shet up!" she says, "I don't want to hear another word out of you."
So we was perfectly safe, then, and didn't have no more trouble about
that delay. Tom done it elegant.
CHAPTER VII. A NIGHT'S VIGIL
BENNY she was looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then;
but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt
Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good
humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and
so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he
didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, and done
a considerable amount of sighing; and it was kind of heart-breaking to
see him so sad and troubled and worried.
By and by, a spell after supper, come a nigger and knocked on the door
and put his head in with his old straw hat in his hand bowing and
scraping, and said his Marse Brace was out at the stile and wanted his
brother, and was getting tired waiting supper for him, and would Marse
Silas please tell him where he was? I never see Uncle Silas speak up so
sharp and fractious before. He says:
"Am I his brother's keeper?" And then he kind of wilted together, and
looked like he wished he hadn't spoken so, and then he says, very gentle:
"But you needn't say that, Billy; I was took sudden and irritable, and I
ain't very well these days, and not hardly responsible. Tell him he ain't
here."
And when the nigger was gone he got up and walked the floor, backwards
and forwards, mumbling and muttering to himself and plowing his hands
through his hair. It was real pitiful to see him. Aunt Sally she
whispered to us and told us not to take notice of him, it embarrassed
him. She said he was always thinking and thinking, since these troubles
come on, and she allowed he didn't more'n about half know what he was
about when the thinking spells was on him; and she said he walked in his
sleep considerable more now than he used to, and sometimes wandered
around over the house and even outdoors in his sleep, and if we catched
him at it we must let him alone and not disturb him. She said she
reckoned it didn't do him no harm, and may be it done him good. She said
Benny was the only one that was much help to him these days. Said Benny
appeared to know just when to try to soothe him and when to leave him
alone.
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and
by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up to
his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and walked
with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed her; and
so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she persuaded
him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and it was
uncommon pretty to see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and by
it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the moonlight, and
fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a good deal of
talk. And Tom said he'd bet the quarreling was all Jubiter's fault, and
he was going to be on hand the first time he got a chance, and see; and
if it was so, he was going to do his level best to get Uncle Silas to
turn him off.
And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours,
and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet and
dark, and everybody gone to bed.
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize
work-gown was gone, and said it wasn't gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to ourn,
and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and couldn't
sleep. We found we couldn't, neither. So we set up a long time, and
smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and down-hearted.
We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again, and got so creepy
and crawly we couldn't get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was late
sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I done
it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he didn't know
just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we couldn't see him
good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went over it the moon
came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over his shoulder, and
we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom says:
"He's a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and
see where he's going to. There, he's turned down by the tobacker-field.
Out of sight now. It's a dreadful pity he can't rest no better."
We waited a long time, but he didn't come back any more, or if he did he
come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went to
sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was
awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and
the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the
trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the
gullies was running rivers. Tom says:
"Looky here, Huck, I'll tell you one thing that's mighty curious. Up to
the time we went out last night the family hadn't heard about Jake Dunlap
being murdered. Now the men that chased Hal Clayton and Bud Dixon away
would spread the thing around in a half an hour, and every neighbor that
heard it would shin out and fly around from one farm to t'other and try
to be the first to tell the news. Land, they don't have such a big thing
as that to tell twice in thirty year! Huck, it's mighty strange; I don't
understand it."
So then he was in a fidget for the rain to let up, so we could turn out
and run across some of the people and see if they would say anything
about it to us. And he said if they did we must be horribly surprised and
shocked.
We was out and gone the minute the rain stopped. It was just broad day
then. We loafed along up the road, and now and then met a person and
stopped and said howdy, and told them when we come, and how we left the
folks at home, and how long we was going to stay, and all that, but none
of them said a word about that thing; which was just astonishing, and no
mistake. Tom said he believed if we went to the sycamores we would find
that body laying there solitary and alone, and not a soul around. Said
he believed the men chased the thieves so far into the woods that the
thieves prob'ly seen a good chance and turned on them at last, and maybe
they all killed each other, and so there wasn't anybody left to tell.
First we knowed, gabbling along that away, we was right at the sycamores.
The cold chills trickled down my back and I wouldn't budge another step,
for all Tom's persuading. But he couldn't hold in; he'd GOT to see if the
boots was safe on that body yet. So he crope in--and the next minute out
he come again with his eyes bulging he was so excited, and says:
"Huck, it's gone!"
I WAS astonished! I says:
"Tom, you don't mean it."
"It's gone, sure. There ain't a sign of it. The ground is trampled
some, but if there was any blood it's all washed away by the storm, for
it's all puddles and slush in there."
At last I give in, and went and took a look myself; and it was just as
Tom said--there wasn't a sign of a corpse.
"Dern it," I says, "the di'monds is gone. Don't you reckon the thieves
slunk back and lugged him off, Tom?"
"Looks like it. It just does. Now where'd they hide him, do you
reckon?"
"I don't know," I says, disgusted, "and what's more I don't care.
They've got the boots, and that's all I cared about. He'll lay around
these woods a long time before I hunt him up."
Tom didn't feel no more intrust in him neither, only curiosity to know
what come of him; but he said we'd lay low and keep dark and it wouldn't
be long till the dogs or somebody rousted him out.
We went back home to breakfast ever so bothered and put out and
disappointed and swindled. I warn't ever so down on a corpse before.
CHAPTER VIII. TALKING WITH THE GHOST
IT warn't very cheerful at breakfast. Aunt Sally she looked old and
tired and let the children snarl and fuss at one another and didn't seem
to notice it was going on, which wasn't her usual style; me and Tom had a
plenty to think about without talking; Benny she looked like she hadn't
had much sleep, and whenever she'd lift her head a little and steal a
look towards her father you could see there was tears in her eyes; and as
for the old man, his things stayed on his plate and got cold without him
knowing they was there, I reckon, for he was thinking and thinking all
the time, and never said a word and never et a bite.
By and by when it was stillest, that nigger's head was poked in at the
door again, and he said his Marse Brace was getting powerful uneasy about
Marse Jubiter, which hadn't come home yet, and would Marse Silas please
--He was looking at Uncle Silas, and he stopped there, like the rest of
his words was froze; for Uncle Silas he rose up shaky and steadied
himself leaning his fingers on the table, and he was panting, and his
eyes was set on the nigger, and he kept swallowing, and put his other
hand up to his throat a couple of times, and at last he got his words
started, and says:
"Does he--does he--think--WHAT does he think! Tell him--tell him--" Then
he sunk down in his chair limp and weak, and says, so as you could hardly
hear him: "Go away--go away!"
The nigger looked scared and cleared out, and we all felt--well, I don't
know how we felt, but it was awful, with the old man panting there, and
his eyes set and looking like a person that was dying. None of us could
budge; but Benny she slid around soft, with her tears running down, and
stood by his side, and nestled his old gray head up against her and begun
to stroke it and pet it with her hands, and nodded to us to go away, and
we done it, going out very quiet, like the dead was there.
Me and Tom struck out for the woods mighty solemn, and saying how
different it was now to what it was last summer when we was here and
everything was so peaceful and happy and everybody thought so much of
Uncle Silas, and he was so cheerful and simple-hearted and pudd'n-headed
and good--and now look at him. If he hadn't lost his mind he wasn't muck
short of it. That was what we allowed.
It was a most lovely day now, and bright and sunshiny; and the further
and further we went over the hills towards the prairie the lovelier and
lovelier the trees and flowers got to be and the more it seemed strange
and somehow wrong that there had to be trouble in such a world as this.
And then all of a sudden I catched my breath and grabbed Tom's arm, and
all my livers and lungs and things fell down into my legs.
"There it is!" I says. We jumped back behind a bush shivering, and Tom
says:
"'Sh!--don't make a noise."
It was setting on a log right in the edge of a little prairie, thinking.
I tried to get Tom to come away, but he wouldn't, and I dasn't budge by
myself. He said we mightn't ever get another chance to see one, and he
was going to look his fill at this one if he died for it. So I looked
too, though it give me the fan-tods to do it. Tom he HAD to talk, but he
talked low. He says:
"Poor Jakey, it's got all its things on, just as he said he would. NOW
you see what we wasn't certain about--its hair. It's not long now the way
it was: it's got it cropped close to its head, the way he said he would.
Huck, I never see anything look any more naturaler than what It does."
"Nor I neither," I says; "I'd recognize it anywheres."
"So would I. It looks perfectly solid and genuwyne, just the way it done
before it died."
So we kept a-gazing. Pretty soon Tom says:
"Huck, there's something mighty curious about this one, don't you know?
IT oughtn't to be going around in the daytime."
"That's so, Tom--I never heard the like of it before."
"No, sir, they don't ever come out only at night--and then not till
after twelve. There's something wrong about this one, now you mark my
words. I don't believe it's got any right to be around in the daytime.
But don't it look natural! Jake was going to play deef and dumb here, so
the neighbors wouldn't know his voice. Do you reckon it would do that if
we was to holler at it?"
"Lordy, Tom, don't talk so! If you was to holler at it I'd die in my
tracks."
"Don't you worry, I ain't going to holler at it. Look, Huck, it's
a-scratching its head--don't you see?"
"Well, what of it?"
"Why, this. What's the sense of it scratching its head? There ain't
anything there to itch; its head is made out of fog or something like
that, and can't itch. A fog can't itch; any fool knows that."
"Well, then, if it don't itch and can't itch, what in the nation is it
scratching it for? Ain't it just habit, don't you reckon?"
"No, sir, I don't. I ain't a bit satisfied about the way this one acts.
I've a blame good notion it's a bogus one--I have, as sure as I'm
a-sitting here. Because, if it--Huck!"
"Well, what's the matter now?"
"YOU CAN'T SEE THE BUSHES THROUGH IT!"
"Why, Tom, it's so, sure! It's as solid as a cow. I sort of begin to
think--"
"Huck, it's biting off a chaw of tobacker! By George, THEY don't
chaw--they hain't got anything to chaw WITH. Huck!"
"I'm a-listening."
"It ain't a ghost at all. It's Jake Dunlap his own self!"
"Oh your granny!" I says.
"Huck Finn, did we find any corpse in the sycamores?"
"No."
"Or any sign of one?"
"No."
"Mighty good reason. Hadn't ever been any corpse there."
"Why, Tom, you know we heard--"
"Yes, we did--heard a howl or two. Does that prove anybody was killed?
Course it don't. And we seen four men run, then this one come walking out
and we took it for a ghost. No more ghost than you are. It was Jake
Dunlap his own self, and it's Jake Dunlap now. He's been and got his
hair cropped, the way he said he would, and he's playing himself for a
stranger, just the same as he said he would. Ghost? Hum!--he's as sound
as a nut."
Then I see it all, and how we had took too much for granted. I was
powerful glad he didn't get killed, and so was Tom, and we wondered which
he would like the best--for us to never let on to know him, or how? Tom
reckoned the best way would be to go and ask him. So he started; but I
kept a little behind, because I didn't know but it might be a ghost,
after all. When Tom got to where he was, he says:
"Me and Huck's mighty glad to see you again, and you needn't be afeared
we'll tell. And if you think it'll be safer for you if we don't let on
to know you when we run across you, say the word and you'll see you can
depend on us, and would ruther cut our hands off than get you into the
least little bit of danger."
First off he looked surprised to see us, and not very glad, either; but
as Tom went on he looked pleasanter, and when he was done he smiled, and
nodded his head several times, and made signs with his hands, and says:
"Goo-goo--goo-goo," the way deef and dummies does.
Just then we see some of Steve Nickerson's people coming that lived
t'other side of the prairie, so Tom says:
"You do it elegant; I never see anybody do it better. You're right; play
it on us, too; play it on us same as the others; it'll keep you in
practice and prevent you making blunders. We'll keep away from you and
let on we don't know you, but any time we can be any help, you just let
us know."
Then we loafed along past the Nickersons, and of course they asked if
that was the new stranger yonder, and where'd he come from, and what was
his name, and which communion was he, Babtis' or Methodis', and which
politics, Whig or Democrat, and how long is he staying, and all them
other questions that humans always asks when a stranger comes, and
animals does, too. But Tom said he warn't able to make anything out of
deef and dumb signs, and the same with goo-gooing. Then we watched them
go and bullyrag Jake; because we was pretty uneasy for him. Tom said it
would take him days to get so he wouldn't forget he was a deef and dummy
sometimes, and speak out before he thought. When we had watched long
enough to see that Jake was getting along all right and working his signs
very good, we loafed along again, allowing to strike the schoolhouse
about recess time, which was a three-mile tramp.
I was so disappointed not to hear Jake tell about the row in the
sycamores, and how near he come to getting killed, that I couldn't seem
to get over it, and Tom he felt the same, but said if we was in Jake's
fix we would want to go careful and keep still and not take any chances.
The boys and girls was all glad to see us again, and we had a real good
time all through recess. Coming to school the Henderson boys had come
across the new deef and dummy and told the rest; so all the scholars was
chuck full of him and couldn't talk about anything else, and was in a
sweat to get a sight of him because they hadn't ever seen a deef and
dummy in their lives, and it made a powerful excitement.
Tom said it was tough to have to keep mum now; said we would be heroes if
we could come out and tell all we knowed; but after all, it was still
more heroic to keep mum, there warn't two boys in a million could do it.
That was Tom Sawyer's idea about it, and reckoned there warn't anybody
could better it.
CHAPTER IX. FINDING OF JUBITER DUNLAP
IN the next two or three days Dummy he got to be powerful popular. He
went associating around with the neighbors, and they made much of him,
and was proud to have such a rattling curiosity among them. They had him
to breakfast, they had him to dinner, they had him to supper; they kept
him loaded up with hog and hominy, and warn't ever tired staring at him
and wondering over him, and wishing they knowed more about him, he was so
uncommon and romantic. His signs warn't no good; people couldn't
understand them and he prob'ly couldn't himself, but he done a sight of
goo-gooing, and so everybody was satisfied, and admired to hear him go
it. He toted a piece of slate around, and a pencil; and people wrote
questions on it and he wrote answers; but there warn't anybody could read
his writing but Brace Dunlap. Brace said he couldn't read it very good,
but he could manage to dig out the meaning most of the time. He said
Dummy said he belonged away off somers and used to be well off, but got
busted by swindlers which he had trusted, and was poor now, and hadn't
any way to make a living.
Everybody praised Brace Dunlap for being so good to that stranger. He
let him have a little log-cabin all to himself, and had his niggers take
care of it, and fetch him all the vittles he wanted.
Dummy was at our house some, because old Uncle Silas was so afflicted
himself, these days, that anybody else that was afflicted was a comfort
to him. Me and Tom didn't let on that we had knowed him before, and he
didn't let on that he had knowed us before. The family talked their
troubles out before him the same as if he wasn't there, but we reckoned
it wasn't any harm for him to hear what they said. Generly he didn't seem
to notice, but sometimes he did.
Well, two or three days went along, and everybody got to getting uneasy
about Jubiter Dunlap. Everybody was asking everybody if they had any
idea what had become of him. No, they hadn't, they said: and they shook
their heads and said there was something powerful strange about it.
Another and another day went by; then there was a report got around that
praps he was murdered. You bet it made a big stir! Everybody's tongue
was clacking away after that. Saturday two or three gangs turned out and
hunted the woods to see if they could run across his remainders. Me and
Tom helped, and it was noble good times and exciting. Tom he was so
brimful of it he couldn't eat nor rest. He said if we could find that
corpse we would be celebrated, and more talked about than if we got
drownded.
The others got tired and give it up; but not Tom Sawyer--that warn't his
style. Saturday night he didn't sleep any, hardly, trying to think up a
plan; and towards daylight in the morning he struck it. He snaked me out
of bed and was all excited, and says:
"Quick, Huck, snatch on your clothes--I've got it! Bloodhound!"
In two minutes we was tearing up the river road in the dark towards the
village. Old Jeff Hooker had a bloodhound, and Tom was going to borrow
him. I says:
"The trail's too old, Tom--and besides, it's rained, you know."
"It don't make any difference, Huck. If the body's hid in the woods
anywhere around the hound will find it. If he's been murdered and buried,
they wouldn't bury him deep, it ain't likely, and if the dog goes over
the spot he'll scent him, sure. Huck, we're going to be celebrated, sure
as you're born!"
He was just a-blazing; and whenever he got afire he was most likely to
get afire all over. That was the way this time. In two minutes he had
got it all ciphered out, and wasn't only just going to find the
corpse--no, he was going to get on the track of that murderer and hunt
HIM down, too; and not only that, but he was going to stick to him till
--"Well," I says, "you better find the corpse first; I reckon that's
a-plenty for to-day. For all we know, there AIN'T any corpse and nobody
hain't been murdered. That cuss could 'a' gone off somers and not been
killed at all."
That graveled him, and he says:
"Huck Finn, I never see such a person as you to want to spoil everything.
As long as YOU can't see anything hopeful in a thing, you won't let
anybody else. What good can it do you to throw cold water on that corpse
and get up that selfish theory that there ain't been any murder? None in
the world. I don't see how you can act so. I wouldn't treat you like
that, and you know it. Here we've got a noble good opportunity to make a
ruputation, and--"
"Oh, go ahead," I says. "I'm sorry, and I take it all back. I didn't
mean nothing. Fix it any way you want it. HE ain't any consequence to
me. If he's killed, I'm as glad of it as you are; and if he--"
"I never said anything about being glad; I only--"
"Well, then, I'm as SORRY as you are. Any way you druther have it, that
is the way I druther have it. He--"
"There ain't any druthers ABOUT it, Huck Finn; nobody said anything about
druthers. And as for--"
He forgot he was talking, and went tramping along, studying. He begun to
get excited again, and pretty soon he says:
"Huck, it'll be the bulliest thing that ever happened if we find the body
after everybody else has quit looking, and then go ahead and hunt up the
murderer. It won't only be an honor to us, but it'll be an honor to
Uncle Silas because it was us that done it. It'll set him up again, you
see if it don't."
But Old Jeff Hooker he throwed cold water on the whole business when we
got to his blacksmith shop and told him what we come for.
"You can take the dog," he says, "but you ain't a-going to find any
corpse, because there ain't any corpse to find. Everybody's quit looking,
and they're right. Soon as they come to think, they knowed there warn't
no corpse. And I'll tell you for why. What does a person kill another
person for, Tom Sawyer?--answer me that."
"Why, he--er--"
"Answer up! You ain't no fool. What does he kill him FOR?"
"Well, sometimes it's for revenge, and--"
"Wait. One thing at a time. Revenge, says you; and right you are. Now
who ever had anything agin that poor trifling no-account? Who do you
reckon would want to kill HIM?--that rabbit!"
Tom was stuck. I reckon he hadn't thought of a person having to have a
REASON for killing a person before, and now he sees it warn't likely
anybody would have that much of a grudge against a lamb like Jubiter
Dunlap. The blacksmith says, by and by:
"The revenge idea won't work, you see. Well, then, what's next? Robbery?
B'gosh, that must 'a' been it, Tom! Yes, sirree, I reckon we've struck it
this time. Some feller wanted his gallus-buckles, and so he--"
But it was so funny he busted out laughing, and just went on laughing and
laughing and laughing till he was 'most dead, and Tom looked so put out
and cheap that I knowed he was ashamed he had come, and he wished he
hadn't. But old Hooker never let up on him. He raked up everything a
person ever could want to kill another person about, and any fool could
see they didn't any of them fit this case, and he just made no end of fun
of the whole business and of the people that had been hunting the body;
and he said:
"If they'd had any sense they'd 'a' knowed the lazy cuss slid out because
he wanted a loafing spell after all this work. He'll come pottering back
in a couple of weeks, and then how'll you fellers feel? But, laws bless
you, take the dog, and go and hunt his remainders. Do, Tom."
Then he busted out, and had another of them forty-rod laughs of hisn.
Tom couldn't back down after all this, so he said, "All right, unchain
him;" and the blacksmith done it, and we started home and left that old
man laughing yet.
It was a lovely dog. There ain't any dog that's got a lovelier
disposition than a bloodhound, and this one knowed us and liked us. He
capered and raced around ever so friendly, and powerful glad to be free
and have a holiday; but Tom was so cut up he couldn't take any intrust in
him, and said he wished he'd stopped and thought a minute before he ever
started on such a fool errand. He said old Jeff Hooker would tell
everybody, and we'd never hear the last of it.
So we loafed along home down the back lanes, feeling pretty glum and not
talking. When we was passing the far corner of our tobacker field we
heard the dog set up a long howl in there, and we went to the place and
he was scratching the ground with all his might, and every now and then
canting up his head sideways and fetching another howl.
It was a long square, the shape of a grave; the rain had made it sink
down and show the shape. The minute we come and stood there we looked at
one another and never said a word. When the dog had dug down only a few
inches he grabbed something and pulled it up, and it was an arm and a
sleeve. Tom kind of gasped out, and says:
"Come away, Huck--it's found."
I just felt awful. We struck for the road and fetched the first men that
come along. They got a spade at the crib and dug out the body, and you
never see such an excitement. You couldn't make anything out of the
face, but you didn't need to. Everybody said:
"Poor Jubiter; it's his clothes, to the last rag!"
Some rushed off to spread the news and tell the justice of the peace and
have an inquest, and me and Tom lit out for the house. Tom was all afire
and 'most out of breath when we come tearing in where Uncle Silas and
Aunt Sally and Benny was. Tom sung out:
"Me and Huck's found Jubiter Dunlap's corpse all by ourselves with a
bloodhound, after everybody else had quit hunting and given it up; and if
it hadn't a been for us it never WOULD 'a' been found; and he WAS
murdered too--they done it with a club or something like that; and I'm
going to start in and find the murderer, next, and I bet I'll do it!"
Aunt Sally and Benny sprung up pale and astonished, but Uncle Silas fell
right forward out of his chair on to the floor and groans out:
"Oh, my God, you've found him NOW!"
CHAPTER X. THE ARREST OF UNCLE SILAS
THEM awful words froze us solid. We couldn't move hand or foot for as
much as half a minute. Then we kind of come to, and lifted the old man
up and got him into his chair, and Benny petted him and kissed him and
tried to comfort him, and poor old Aunt Sally she done the same; but,
poor things, they was so broke up and scared and knocked out of their
right minds that they didn't hardly know what they was about. With Tom
it was awful; it 'most petrified him to think maybe he had got his uncle
into a thousand times more trouble than ever, and maybe it wouldn't ever
happened if he hadn't been so ambitious to get celebrated, and let the
corpse alone the way the others done. But pretty soon he sort of come to
himself again and says:
"Uncle Silas, don't you say another word like that. It's dangerous, and
there ain't a shadder of truth in it."
Aunt Sally and Benny was thankful to hear him say that, and they said the
same; but the old man he wagged his head sorrowful and hopeless, and the
tears run down his face, and he says;
"No--I done it; poor Jubiter, I done it!"
It was dreadful to hear him say it. Then he went on and told about it,
and said it happened the day me and Tom come--along about sundown. He
said Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just
sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head
with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was scared
and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and begged
him to speak and say he wasn't dead; and before long he come to, and when
he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was 'most scared to
death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was gone. So
he hoped he wasn't hurt bad.
"But laws," he says, "it was only just fear that gave him that last
little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid
down in the bush, and there wasn't anybody to help him, and he died."
Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the
mark of Cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going to
be found out and hung. But Tom said:
"No, you ain't going to be found out. You DIDN'T kill him. ONE lick
wouldn't kill him. Somebody else done it."
"Oh, yes," he says, "I done it--nobody else. Who else had anything
against him? Who else COULD have anything against him?"
He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that
could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of course it
warn't no use--he HAD us; we couldn't say a word. He noticed that, and
he saddened down again, and I never see a face so miserable and so
pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says:
"But hold on!--somebody BURIED him. Now who--"
He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders
when he said them words, because right away I remembered about us seeing
Uncle Silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in the night
that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, too, because she was talking
about it one day. The minute Tom shut off he changed the subject and
went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us done the
same, and said he MUST, and said it wasn't his business to tell on
himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it was found
out and any harm come to him it would break the family's hearts and kill
them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he promised. We was
all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old
man. We told him all he'd got to do was to keep still, and it wouldn't
be long till the whole thing would blow over and be forgot. We all said
there wouldn't anybody ever suspect Uncle Silas, nor ever dream of such a
thing, he being so good and kind, and having such a good character; and
Tom says, cordial and hearty, he says:
"Why, just look at it a minute; just consider. Here is Uncle Silas, all
these years a preacher--at his own expense; all these years doing good
with all his might and every way he can think of--at his own expense, all
the time; always been loved by everybody, and respected; always been
peaceable and minding his own business, the very last man in this whole
deestrict to touch a person, and everybody knows it. Suspect HIM? Why,
it ain't any more possible than--"
"By authority of the State of Arkansaw, I arrest you for the murder of
Jubiter Dunlap!" shouts the sheriff at the door.
It was awful. Aunt Sally and Benny flung themselves at Uncle Silas,
screaming and crying, and hugged him and hung to him, and Aunt Sally said
go away, she wouldn't ever give him up, they shouldn't have him, and the
niggers they come crowding and crying to the door and--well, I couldn't
stand it; it was enough to break a person's heart; so I got out.
They took him up to the little one-horse jail in the village, and we all
went along to tell him good-bye; and Tom was feeling elegant, and says to
me, "We'll have a most noble good time and heaps of danger some dark
night getting him out of there, Huck, and it'll be talked about
everywheres and we will be celebrated;" but the old man busted that
scheme up the minute he whispered to him about it. He said no, it was his
duty to stand whatever the law done to him, and he would stick to the
jail plumb through to the end, even if there warn't no door to it. It
disappointed Tom and graveled him a good deal, but he had to put up with
it.
But he felt responsible and bound to get his uncle Silas free; and he
told Aunt Sally, the last thing, not to worry, because he was going to
turn in and work night and day and beat this game and fetch Uncle Silas
out innocent; and she was very loving to him and thanked him and said she
knowed he would do his very best. And she told us to help Benny take
care of the house and the children, and then we had a good-bye cry all
around and went back to the farm, and left her there to live with the
jailer's wife a month till the trial in October.
CHAPTER XI. TOM SAWYER DISCOVERS THE MURDERERS
WELL, that was a hard month on us all. Poor Benny, she kept up the best
she could, and me and Tom tried to keep things cheerful there at the
house, but it kind of went for nothing, as you may say. It was the same
up at the jail. We went up every day to see the old people, but it was
awful dreary, because the old man warn't sleeping much, and was walking
in his sleep considerable and so he got to looking fagged and miserable,
and his mind got shaky, and we all got afraid his troubles would break
him down and kill him. And whenever we tried to persuade him to feel
cheerfuler, he only shook his head and said if we only knowed what it was
to carry around a murderer's load in your heart we wouldn't talk that
way. Tom and all of us kept telling him it WASN'T murder, but just
accidental killing! but it never made any difference--it was murder, and
he wouldn't have it any other way. He actu'ly begun to come out plain
and square towards trial time and acknowledge that he TRIED to kill the
man. Why, that was awful, you know. It made things seem fifty times as
dreadful, and there warn't no more comfort for Aunt Sally and Benny. But
he promised he wouldn't say a word about his murder when others was
around, and we was glad of that.
Tom Sawyer racked the head off of himself all that month trying to plan
some way out for Uncle Silas, and many's the night he kept me up 'most
all night with this kind of tiresome work, but he couldn't seem to get on
the right track no way. As for me, I reckoned a body might as well give
it up, it all looked so blue and I was so downhearted; but he wouldn't.
He stuck to the business right along, and went on planning and thinking
and ransacking his head.
So at last the trial come on, towards the middle of October, and we was
all in the court. The place was jammed, of course. Poor old Uncle
Silas, he looked more like a dead person than a live one, his eyes was so
hollow and he looked so thin and so mournful. Benny she set on one side
of him and Aunt Sally on the other, and they had veils on, and was full
of trouble. But Tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in
everywheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge let him. He
'most took the business out of the lawyer's hands sometimes; which was
well enough, because that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement
lawyer and didn't know enough to come in when it rains, as the saying is.
They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up
and begun. He made a terrible speech against the old man, that made him
moan and groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way HE told about
the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old
man's tale. He said he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was SEEN to
kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it deliberate, and
SAID he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him with the club;
and they seen him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that Jubiter
was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and lugged Jubiter down
into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. And said Uncle Silas
turned out, away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen him at
it.
I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because he
reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn't bear to break Aunt Sally's heart
and Benny's; and right he was: as for me, I would 'a' lied the same way,
and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such misery and
sorrow which THEY warn't no ways responsible for. Well, it made our
lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for a little
spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't worried--but I
knowed he WAS, all the same. And the people--my, but it made a stir
amongst them!
And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to
prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses.
First, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt
Uncle Silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle
Silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got
worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got
afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain Uncle
Silas would up and kill him some time or another.
Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they
stuck to what they said.
Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into my
mind, then, how Lem and Jim Lane had come along talking, that time, about
borrowing a dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap; and that brought up the
blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up Bill and Jack Withers,
and how they passed by, talking about a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's
corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come along about the same
time and scared us so--and here HE was too, and a privileged character,
on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger, and they had fixed
him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his legs and be
comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so they couldn't
hardly breathe. So it all come back to me just the way it was that day;
and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to then, and how
miserable ever since.
LEM BEEBE, sworn, said--"I was a-coming along, that day,
second of September, and Jim Lane was with me, and it was
towards sundown, and we heard loud talk, like quarrelling,
and we was very close, only the hazel bushes between (that's
along the fence); and we heard a voice say, 'I've told you
more'n once I'd kill you,' and knowed it was this prisoner's
voice; and then we see a club come up above the bushes and
down out of sight again, and heard a smashing thump and then
a groan or two: and then we crope soft to where we could
see, and there laid Jupiter Dunlap dead, and this prisoner
standing over him with the club; and the next he hauled the
dead man into a clump of bushes and hid him, and then we
stooped low, to be cut of sight, and got away."
Well, it was awful. It kind of froze everybody's blood to hear it, and
the house was 'most as still whilst he was telling it as if there warn't
nobody in it. And when he was done, you could hear them gasp and sigh,
all over the house, and look at one another the same as to say, "Ain't it
perfectly terrible--ain't it awful!"
Now happened a thing that astonished me. All the time the first
witnesses was proving the bad blood and the threats and all that, Tom
Sawyer was alive and laying for them; and the minute they was through, he
went for them, and done his level best to catch them in lies and spile
their testimony. But now, how different. When Lem first begun to talk,
and never said anything about speaking to Jubiter or trying to borrow a
dog off of him, he was all alive and laying for Lem, and you could see he
was getting ready to cross-question him to death pretty soon, and then I
judged him and me would go on the stand by and by and tell what we heard
him and Jim Lane say. But the next time I looked at Tom I got the cold
shivers. Why, he was in the brownest study you ever see--miles and miles
away. He warn't hearing a word Lem Beebe was saying; and when he got
through he was still in that brown-study, just the same. Our lawyer
joggled him, and then he looked up startled, and says, "Take the witness
if you want him. Lemme alone--I want to think."
Well, that beat me. I couldn't understand it. And Benny and her
mother--oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their
veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and I
couldn't get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the witness,
but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.
Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again,
exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and
thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and
come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution
looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was
just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law
for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom
had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it
and you could see the judge didn't like it much. All that the mud-turtle
got out of Lem and Jim was this: he asked them:
"Why didn't you go and tell what you saw?"
"We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just
starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon
as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then
we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it."
"When was that?"
"Saturday night, September 9th."
The judge he spoke up and says:
"Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being
accessionary after the fact to the murder."
The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says:
"Your honor! I protest against this extraordi--"
"Set down!" says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his
pulpit. "I beg you to respect the Court."
So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers.
BILL WITHERS, sworn, said: "I was coming along about sundown,
Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner's field, and my
brother Jack was with me and we seen a man toting off
something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger
stealing corn; we couldn't see distinct; next we made out that
it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind
of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the
man's walk we said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had
found Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying
to reform him, and was toting him out of danger."
It made the people shiver to think of poor old Uncle Silas toting off the
diseased down to the place in his tobacker field where the dog dug up the
body, but there warn't much sympathy around amongst the faces, and I
heard one cuss say "'Tis the coldest blooded work I ever struck, lugging
a murdered man around like that, and going to bury him like a animal, and
him a preacher at that."
Tom he went on thinking, and never took no notice; so our lawyer took the
witness and done the best he could, and it was plenty poor enough.
Then Jack Withers he come on the stand and told the same tale, just like
Bill done.
And after him comes Brace Dunlap, and he was looking very mournful, and
most crying; and there was a rustle and a stir all around, and everybody
got ready to listen, and lost of the women folks said, "Poor cretur, poor
cretur," and you could see a many of them wiping their eyes.
BRACE DUNLAP, sworn, said: "I was in considerable trouble a
long time about my poor brother, but I reckoned things warn't
near so bad as he made out, and I couldn't make myself believe
anybody would have the heart to hurt a poor harmless cretur
like that"--[by jings, I was sure I seen Tom give a kind of a
faint little start, and then look disappointed again]--"and
you know I COULDN'T think a preacher would hurt him--it warn't
natural to think such an onlikely thing--so I never paid much
attention, and now I sha'n't ever, ever forgive myself; for if
I had a done different, my poor brother would be with me this
day, and not laying yonder murdered, and him so harmless." He
kind of broke down there and choked up, and waited to get his
voice; and people all around said the most pitiful things, and
women cried; and it was very still in there, and solemn, and
old Uncle Silas, poor thing, he give a groan right out so
everybody heard him. Then Brace he went on, "Saturday,
September 2d, he didn't come home to supper. By-and-by I got a
little uneasy, and one of my niggers went over to this
prisoner's place, but come back and said he warn't there. So
I got uneasier and uneasier, and couldn't rest. I went to
bed, but I couldn't sleep; and turned out, away late in the
night, and went wandering over to this prisoner's place and
all around about there a good while, hoping I would run across
my poor brother, and never knowing he was out of his troubles
and gone to a better shore--" So he broke down and choked up
again, and most all the women was crying now. Pretty soon he
got another start and says: "But it warn't no use; so at last
I went home and tried to get some sleep, but couldn't. Well,
in a day or two everybody was uneasy, and they got to talking
about this prisoner's threats, and took to the idea, which I
didn't take no stock in, that my brother was murdered so they
hunted around and tried to find his body, but couldn't and
give it up. And so I reckoned he was gone off somers to have
a little peace, and would come back to us when his troubles
was kind of healed. But late Saturday night, the 9th, Lem
Beebe and Jim Lane come to my house and told me all--told me
the whole awful 'sassination, and my heart was broke. And THEN
I remembered something that hadn't took no hold of me at the
time, because reports said this prisoner had took to walking
in his sleep and doing all kind of things of no consequence,
not knowing what he was about. I will tell you what that
thing was that come back into my memory. Away late that awful
Saturday night when I was wandering around about this
prisoner's place, grieving and troubled, I was down by the
corner of the tobacker-field and I heard a sound like digging
in a gritty soil; and I crope nearer and peeped through the
vines that hung on the rail fence and seen this prisoner
SHOVELING--shoveling with a long-handled shovel--heaving earth
into a big hole that was most filled up; his back was to me,
but it was bright moonlight and I knowed him by his old green
baize work-gown with a splattery white patch in the middle of
the back like somebody had hit him with a snowball. HE WAS
BURYING THE MAN HE'D MURDERED!"
And he slumped down in his chair crying and sobbing, and 'most everybody
in the house busted out wailing, and crying, and saying, "Oh, it's
awful--awful--horrible! and there was a most tremendous excitement, and
you couldn't hear yourself think; and right in the midst of it up jumps
old Uncle Silas, white as a sheet, and sings out:
"IT'S TRUE, EVERY WORD--I MURDERED HIM IN COLD BLOOD!"
By Jackson, it petrified them! People rose up wild all over the house,
straining and staring for a better look at him, and the judge was
hammering with his mallet and the sheriff yelling "Order--order in the
court--order!"
And all the while the old man stood there a-quaking and his eyes
a-burning, and not looking at his wife and daughter, which was clinging
to him and begging him to keep still, but pawing them off with his hands
and saying he WOULD clear his black soul from crime, he WOULD heave off
this load that was more than he could bear, and he WOULDN'T bear it
another hour! And then he raged right along with his awful tale,
everybody a-staring and gasping, judge, jury, lawyers, and everybody, and
Benny and Aunt Sally crying their hearts out. And by George, Tom Sawyer
never looked at him once! Never once--just set there gazing with all his
eyes at something else, I couldn't tell what. And so the old man raged
right along, pouring his words out like a stream of fire:
"I killed him! I am guilty! But I never had the notion in my life to hurt
him or harm him, spite of all them lies about my threatening him, till
the very minute I raised the club--then my heart went cold!--then the
pity all went out of it, and I struck to kill! In that one moment all my
wrongs come into my mind; all the insults that that man and the scoundrel
his brother, there, had put upon me, and how they laid in together to
ruin me with the people, and take away my good name, and DRIVE me to some
deed that would destroy me and my family that hadn't ever done THEM no
harm, so help me God! And they done it in a mean revenge--for why?
Because my innocent pure girl here at my side wouldn't marry that rich,
insolent, ignorant coward, Brace Dunlap, who's been sniveling here over a
brother he never cared a brass farthing for--"[I see Tom give a jump and
look glad THIS time, to a dead certainty]"--and in that moment I've told
you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my heart's bitterness, God
forgive me, and I struck to kill. In one second I was miserably
sorry--oh, filled with remorse; but I thought of my poor family, and I
MUST hide what I'd done for their sakes; and I did hide that corpse in
the bushes; and presently I carried it to the tobacker field; and in the
deep night I went with my shovel and buried it where--"
Up jumps Tom and shouts:
"NOW, I've got it!" and waves his hand, oh, ever so fine and starchy,
towards the old man, and says:
"Set down! A murder WAS done, but you never had no hand in it!"
Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the old man he sunk down
kind of bewildered in his seat and Aunt Sally and Benny didn't know it,
because they was so astonished and staring at Tom with their mouths open
and not knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same. I
never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain't ever seen
eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom says,
perfectly ca'm:
"Your honor, may I speak?"
"For God's sake, yes--go on!" says the judge, so astonished and mixed up
he didn't know what he was about hardly.
Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two--that was for to work
up an "effect," as he calls it--then he started in just as ca'm as ever,
and says:
"For about two weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front
of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of
big di'monds--stole at St. Louis. Them di'monds is worth twelve thousand
dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it. Now about this
murder. I will tell you all about it--how it happened--who done it--every
DEtail."
You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was
worth.
"This man here, Brace Dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead
brother that YOU know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that
young girl there, and she wouldn't have him. So he told Uncle Silas he
would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how
little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried,
and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to
be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm
and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter
done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and
fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt,
so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody
turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it
graduly broke his heart--yes, and he was so worried and distressed that
often he warn't hardly in his right mind.
"Well, on that Saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of
these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle
Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work--and that much of what they've said
is true, the rest is lies. They didn't hear Uncle Silas say he would kill
Jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck; they didn't see no dead man,
and they didn't see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look at them
now--how they set there, wishing they hadn't been so handy with their
tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before I get done.
"That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers DID see one man lugging
off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is
lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's
corn--you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody
overheard them say that. That's because they found out by and by who it
was that was doing the lugging, and THEY know best why they swore here
that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait--which it WASN'T, and they
knowed it when they swore to that lie.
"A man out in the moonlight DID see a murdered person put under ground in
the tobacker field--but it wasn't Uncle Silas that done the burying. He
was in his bed at that very time.
"Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you've ever noticed
this: that people, when they're thinking deep, or when they're worried,
are most always doing something with their hands, and they don't know it,
and don't notice what it is their hands are doing, some stroke their
chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up UNDER their chin with
their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there's some
that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or
under their chin or on their under lip. That's MY way. When I'm
restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V's on my cheek or
on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything BUT capital V's--and
half the time I don't notice it and don't know I'm doing it."
That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see
people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean "THAT's
so."
"Now, then, I'll go on. That same Saturday--no, it was the night
before--there was a steamboat laying at Flagler's Landing, forty miles
above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And there
was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di'monds that's advertised
out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag
and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could
get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals aboard the
boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance
they got and take the di'monds; because all three stole them, and then
this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
"Well, he hadn't been gone more'n ten minutes before his pals found it
out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob'ly they burnt
matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all
day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to
the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas's field, and he went in there
to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed
himself here in the town--and mind you he done that just a little after
the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a
club--for he DID hit him.
"But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of
sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him.
"They fell on him and clubbed him to death.
"Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never had no mercy on him,
but clubbed him to death. And two men that was running along the road
heard him yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca-i more
bunch--which was where they was bound for, anyway--and when the pals saw
them they lit out and the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight
as they could go. But only a minute or two--then these two new men
slipped back very quiet into the sycamores.
"THEN what did they do? I will tell you what they done. They found where
the thief had got his disguise out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one
of them strips and puts on that disguise."
Tom waited a little here, for some more "effect"--then he says, very
deliberate:
"The man that put on that dead man's disguise was--JUBITER DUNLAP!"
"Great Scott!" everybody shouted, all over the house, and old Uncle Silas
he looked perfectly astonished.
"Yes, it was Jubiter Dunlap. Not dead, you see. Then they pulled off
the dead man's boots and put Jubiter Dunlap's old ragged shoes on the
corpse and put the corpse's boots on Jubiter Dunlap. Then Jubiter Dunlap
stayed where he was, and the other man lugged the dead body off in the
twilight; and after midnight he went to Uncle Silas's house, and took his
old green work-robe off of the peg where it always hangs in the passage
betwixt the house and the kitchen and put it on, and stole the
long-handled shovel and went off down into the tobacker field and buried
the murdered man."
He stopped, and stood half a minute. Then--"And who do you reckon the
murdered man WAS? It was--JAKE Dunlap, the long-lost burglar!"
"Great Scott!"
"And the man that buried him was--BRACE Dunlap, his brother!"
"Great Scott!"
"And who do you reckon is this mowing idiot here that's letting on all
these weeks to be a deef and dumb stranger? It's--JUBITER Dunlap!"
My land, they all busted out in a howl, and you never see the like of
that excitement since the day you was born. And Tom he made a jump for
Jubiter and snaked off his goggles and his false whiskers, and there was
the murdered man, sure enough, just as alive as anybody! And Aunt Sally
and Benny they went to hugging and crying and kissing and smothering old
Uncle Silas to that degree he was more muddled and confused and mushed up
in his mind than he ever was before, and that is saying considerable.
And next, people begun to yell:
"Tom Sawyer! Tom Sawyer! Shut up everybody, and let him go on! Go on, Tom
Sawyer!"
Which made him feel uncommon bully, for it was nuts for Tom Sawyer to be
a public character that-away, and a hero, as he calls it. So when it was
all quiet, he says:
"There ain't much left, only this. When that man there, Bruce Dunlap,
had most worried the life and sense out of Uncle Silas till at last he
plumb lost his mind and hit this other blatherskite, his brother, with a
club, I reckon he seen his chance. Jubiter broke for the woods to hide,
and I reckon the game was for him to slide out, in the night, and leave
the country. Then Brace would make everybody believe Uncle Silas killed
him and hid his body somers; and that would ruin Uncle Silas and drive
HIM out of the country--hang him, maybe; I dunno. But when they found
their dead brother in the sycamores without knowing him, because he was
so battered up, they see they had a better thing; disguise BOTH and bury
Jake and dig him up presently all dressed up in Jubiter's clothes, and
hire Jim Lane and Bill Withers and the others to swear to some handy
lies--which they done. And there they set, now, and I told them they
would be looking sick before I got done, and that is the way they're
looking now.
"Well, me and Huck Finn here, we come down on the boat with the thieves,
and the dead one told us all about the di'monds, and said the others
would murder him if they got the chance; and we was going to help him all
we could. We was bound for the sycamores when we heard them killing him
in there; but we was in there in the early morning after the storm and
allowed nobody hadn't been killed, after all. And when we see Jubiter
Dunlap here spreading around in the very same disguise Jake told us HE
was going to wear, we thought it was Jake his own self--and he was
goo-gooing deef and dumb, and THAT was according to agreement.
"Well, me and Huck went on hunting for the corpse after the others quit,
and we found it. And was proud, too; but Uncle Silas he knocked us crazy
by telling us HE killed the man. So we was mighty sorry we found the
body, and was bound to save Uncle Silas's neck if we could; and it was
going to be tough work, too, because he wouldn't let us break him out of
prison the way we done with our old nigger Jim.
"I done everything I could the whole month to think up some way to save
Uncle Silas, but I couldn't strike a thing. So when we come into court
to-day I come empty, and couldn't see no chance anywheres. But by and by
I had a glimpse of something that set me thinking--just a little wee
glimpse--only that, and not enough to make sure; but it set me thinking
hard--and WATCHING, when I was only letting on to think; and by and by,
sure enough, when Uncle Silas was piling out that stuff about HIM killing
Jubiter Dunlap, I catched that glimpse again, and this time I jumped up
and shut down the proceedings, because I KNOWED Jubiter Dunlap was
a-setting here before me. I knowed him by a thing which I seen him
do--and I remembered it. I'd seen him do it when I was here a year ago."
He stopped then, and studied a minute--laying for an "effect"--I knowed
it perfectly well. Then he turned off like he was going to leave the
platform, and says, kind of lazy and indifferent:
"Well, I believe that is all."
Why, you never heard such a howl!--and it come from the whole house:
"What WAS it you seen him do? Stay where you are, you little devil! You
think you are going to work a body up till his mouth's a-watering and
stop there? What WAS it he done?"
That was it, you see--he just done it to get an "effect"; you couldn't
'a' pulled him off of that platform with a yoke of oxen.
"Oh, it wasn't anything much," he says. "I seen him looking a little
excited when he found Uncle Silas was actuly fixing to hang himself for a
murder that warn't ever done; and he got more and more nervous and
worried, I a-watching him sharp but not seeming to look at him--and all
of a sudden his hands begun to work and fidget, and pretty soon his left
crept up and HIS FINGER DRAWED A CROSS ON HIS CHEEK, and then I HAD him!"
Well, then they ripped and howled and stomped and clapped their hands
till Tom Sawyer was that proud and happy he didn't know what to do with
himself.
And then the judge he looked down over his pulpit and says:
"My boy, did you SEE all the various details of this strange conspiracy
and tragedy that you've been describing?"
"No, your honor, I didn't see any of them."
"Didn't see any of them! Why, you've told the whole history straight
through, just the same as if you'd seen it with your eyes. How did you
manage that?"
Tom says, kind of easy and comfortable:
"Oh, just noticing the evidence and piecing this and that together, your
honor; just an ordinary little bit of detective work; anybody could 'a'
done it."
"Nothing of the kind! Not two in a million could 'a' done it. You are a
very remarkable boy."
Then they let go and give Tom another smashing round, and he--well, he
wouldn't 'a' sold out for a silver mine. Then the judge says:
"But are you certain you've got this curious history straight?"
"Perfectly, your honor. Here is Brace Dunlap--let him deny his share of
it if he wants to take the chance; I'll engage to make him wish he hadn't
said anything...... Well, you see HE'S pretty quiet. And his brother's
pretty quiet, and them four witnesses that lied so and got paid for it,
they're pretty quiet. And as for Uncle Silas, it ain't any use for him
to put in his oar, I wouldn't believe him under oath!"
Well, sir, that fairly made them shout; and even the judge he let go and
laughed. Tom he was just feeling like a rainbow. When they was done
laughing he looks up at the judge and says:
"Your honor, there's a thief in this house."
"A thief?"
"Yes, sir. And he's got them twelve-thousand-dollar di'monds on him."
By gracious, but it made a stir! Everybody went shouting:
"Which is him? which is him? p'int him out!"
And the judge says:
"Point him out, my lad. Sheriff, you will arrest him. Which one is it?"
Tom says:
"This late dead man here--Jubiter Dunlap."
Then there was another thundering let-go of astonishment and excitement;
but Jubiter, which was astonished enough before, was just fairly
putrified with astonishment this time. And he spoke up, about half
crying, and says:
"Now THAT'S a lie. Your honor, it ain't fair; I'm plenty bad enough
without that. I done the other things--Brace he put me up to it, and
persuaded me, and promised he'd make me rich, some day, and I done it,
and I'm sorry I done it, and I wisht I hadn't; but I hain't stole no
di'monds, and I hain't GOT no di'monds; I wisht I may never stir if it
ain't so. The sheriff can search me and see."
Tom says:
"Your honor, it wasn't right to call him a thief, and I'll let up on that
a little. He did steal the di'monds, but he didn't know it. He stole
them from his brother Jake when he was laying dead, after Jake had stole
them from the other thieves; but Jubiter didn't know he was stealing
them; and he's been swelling around here with them a month; yes, sir,
twelve thousand dollars' worth of di'monds on him--all that riches, and
going around here every day just like a poor man. Yes, your honor, he's
got them on him now."
The judge spoke up and says:
"Search him, sheriff."
Well, sir, the sheriff he ransacked him high and low, and everywhere:
searched his hat, socks, seams, boots, everything--and Tom he stood there
quiet, laying for another of them effects of hisn. Finally the sheriff
he give it up, and everybody looked disappointed, and Jubiter says:
"There, now! what'd I tell you?"
And the judge says:
"It appears you were mistaken this time, my boy."
Then Tom took an attitude and let on to be studying with all his might,
and scratching his head. Then all of a sudden he glanced up chipper, and
says:
"Oh, now I've got it! I'd forgot."
Which was a lie, and I knowed it. Then he says:
"Will somebody be good enough to lend me a little small screwdriver?
There was one in your brother's hand-bag that you smouched, Jubiter. but
I reckon you didn't fetch it with you."
"No, I didn't. I didn't want it, and I give it away."
"That's because you didn't know what it was for."
Jubiter had his boots on again, by now, and when the thing Tom wanted was
passed over the people's heads till it got to him, he says to Jubiter:
"Put up your foot on this chair." And he kneeled down and begun to
unscrew the heel-plate, everybody watching; and when he got that big
di'mond out of that boot-heel and held it up and let it flash and blaze
and squirt sunlight everwhichaway, it just took everybody's breath; and
Jubiter he looked so sick and sorry you never see the like of it. And
when Tom held up the other di'mond he looked sorrier than ever. Land! he
was thinking how he would 'a' skipped out and been rich and independent
in a foreign land if he'd only had the luck to guess what the screwdriver
was in the carpet-bag for.
Well, it was a most exciting time, take it all around, and Tom got cords
of glory. The judge took the di'monds, and stood up in his pulpit, and
cleared his throat, and shoved his spectacles back on his head, and says:
"I'll keep them and notify the owners; and when they send for them it
will be a real pleasure to me to hand you the two thousand dollars, for
you've earned the money--yes, and you've earned the deepest and most
sincerest thanks of this community besides, for lifting a wronged and
innocent family out of ruin and shame, and saving a good and honorable
man from a felon's death, and for exposing to infamy and the punishment
of the law a cruel and odious scoundrel and his miserable creatures!"
Well, sir, if there'd been a brass band to bust out some music, then, it
would 'a' been just the perfectest thing I ever see, and Tom Sawyer he
said the same.
Then the sheriff he nabbed Brace Dunlap and his crowd, and by and by next
month the judge had them up for trial and jailed the whole lot. And
everybody crowded back to Uncle Silas's little old church, and was ever
so loving and kind to him and the family and couldn't do enough for them;
and Uncle Silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons
you ever struck, and would tangle you up so you couldn't find your way
home in daylight; but the people never let on but what they thought it
was the clearest and brightest and elegantest sermons that ever was; and
they would set there and cry, for love and pity; but, by George, they
give me the jim-jams and the fan-tods and caked up what brains I had, and
turned them solid; but by and by they loved the old man's intellects back
into him again, and he was as sound in his skull as ever he was, which
ain't no flattery, I reckon. And so the whole family was as happy as
birds, and nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to
Tom Sawyer; and the same to me, though I hadn't done nothing. And when
the two thousand dollars come, Tom give half of it to me, and never told
anybody so, which didn't surprise me, because I knowed him.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Tom Sawyer, Detective
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
FOLLOWING
THE EQUATOR
A JOURNEY AROUND THE WORLD
BY
MARK TWAIN
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS
HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT
THIS BOOK
Is affectionately inscribed to
MY YOUNG FRIEND
HARRY ROGERS
WITH RECOGNITION
OF WHAT HE IS, AND APPREHENSION OF WHAT HE MAY BECOME
UNLESS HE FORM HIMSELF A LITTLE MORE CLOSELY
UPON THE MODEL OF
THE AUTHOR.
THE PUDD'NHEAD MAXIMS.
THESE WISDOMS ARE FOR THE LURING OF YOUTH TOWARD
HIGH MORAL ALTITUDES. THE AUTHOR DID NOT
GATHER THEM FROM PRACTICE, BUT FROM
OBSERVATION. TO BE GOOD IS NOBLE;
BUT TO SHOW OTHERS HOW
TO BE GOOD IS NOBLER
AND NO TROUBLE.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
The Party--Across America to Vancouver--On Board the Warrimo--Steamer
Chairs-The Captain-Going Home under a Cloud--A Gritty Purser--The
Brightest Passenger--Remedy for Bad Habits--The Doctor and the Lumbago
--A Moral Pauper--Limited Smoking--Remittance-men.
CHAPTER II.
Change of Costume--Fish, Snake, and Boomerang Stories--Tests of Memory
--A Brahmin Expert--General Grant's Memory--A Delicately Improper Tale
CHAPTER III.
Honolulu--Reminiscences of the Sandwich Islands--King Liholiho and His
Royal Equipment--The Tabu--The Population of the Island--A Kanaka Diver
--Cholera at Honolulu--Honolulu; Past and Present--The Leper Colony
CHAPTER IV.
Leaving Honolulu--Flying-fish--Approaching the Equator--Why the Ship Went
Slow--The Front Yard of the Ship--Crossing the Equator--Horse Billiards
or Shovel Board--The Waterbury Watch--Washing Decks--Ship Painters--The
Great Meridian--The Loss of a Day--A Babe without a Birthday
CHAPTER V.
A lesson in Pronunciation--Reverence for Robert Burns--The Southern
Cross--Troublesome Constellations--Victoria for a Name--Islands on the
Map--Alofa and Fortuna--Recruiting for the Queensland Plantations
--Captain Warren's NoteBook--Recruiting not thoroughly Popular
CHAPTER VI.
Missionaries Obstruct Business--The Sugar Planter and the Kanaka--The
Planter's View--Civilizing the Kanaka The Missionary's View--The Result
--Repentant Kanakas--Wrinkles--The Death Rate in Queensland
CHAPTER VII.
The Fiji Islands--Suva--The Ship from Duluth--Going Ashore--Midwinter in
Fiji--Seeing the Governor--Why Fiji was Ceded to England--Old time
Fijians--Convicts among the Fijians--A Case Where Marriage was a Failure
Immortality with Limitations
CHAPTER VIII.
A Wilderness of Islands--Two Men without a Country--A Naturalist from New
Zealand--The Fauna of Australasia--Animals, Insects, and Birds--The
Ornithorhynchus--Poetry and Plagiarism
CHAPTER IX.
Close to Australia--Porpoises at Night--Entrance to Sydney Harbor--The
Loss of the Duncan Dunbar--The Harbor--The City of Sydney--Spring-time in
Australia--The Climate--Information for Travelers--The Size of Australia
--A Dust-Storm and Hot Wind
CHAPTER X.
The Discovery of Australia--Transportation of Convicts--Discipline
--English Laws, Ancient and Modern--Flogging Prisoners to Death--Arrival of
Settlers--New South Wales Corps--Rum Currency--Intemperance Everywhere
$100,000 for One Gallon of Rum--Development of the Country--Immense
Resources
CHAPTER XI.
Hospitality of English-speaking People--Writers and their Gratitude--Mr.
Gane and the Panegyrics--Population of Sydney An English City with
American Trimming--"Squatters"--Palaces and Sheep Kingdoms--Wool and
Mutton--Australians and Americans--Costermonger Pronunciation--England is
"Home"--Table Talk--English and Colonial Audiences 124
CHAPTER XII.
Mr. X., a Missionary--Why Christianity Makes Slow Progress in India--A
Large Dream--Hindoo Miracles and Legends--Sampson and Hanuman--The
Sandstone Ridge--Where are the Gates?
CHAPTER XIII.
Public Works in Australasia--Botanical Garden of Sydney--Four Special
Socialties--The Government House--A Governor and His Functions--The
Admiralty House--The Tour of the Harbor--Shark Fishing--Cecil Rhodes'
Shark and his First Fortune--Free Board for Sharks.
CHAPTER XIV.
Bad Health--To Melbourne by Rail--Maps Defective--The Colony of Victoria
--A Round-trip Ticket from Sydney--Change Cars, from Wide to Narrow
Gauge, a Peculiarity at Albury--Customs-fences--"My Word"--The Blue
Mountains--Rabbit Piles--Government R. R. Restaurants--Duchesses for
Waiters--"Sheep-dip"--Railroad Coffee--Things Seen and Not Seen
CHAPTER XV.
Wagga-Wagga--The Tichborne Claimant--A Stock Mystery--The Plan of the
Romance--The Realization--The Henry Bascom Mystery--Bascom Hall--The
Author's Death and Funeral
CHAPTER XVI.
Melbourne and its Attractions--The Melbourne Cup Races--Cup Day--Great
Crowds--Clothes Regardless of Cost--The Australian Larrikin--Is He Dead?
Australian Hospitality--Melbourne Wool-brokers--The Museums--The Palaces
--The Origin of Melbourne
CHAPTER XVII.
The British Empire--Its Exports and Imports--The Trade of Australia--To
Adelaide--Broken Hill Silver Mine--A Roundabout road--The Scrub and its
Possibilities for the Novelist--The Aboriginal Tracker--A Test Case--How
Does One Cow-Track Differ from Another?
CHAPTER XVIII.
Gum Trees--Unsociable Trees--Gorse and Broom--A universal Defect--An
Adventurer--Wanted L200, got L20,000,000--A Vast Land Scheme--The
Smash-up--The Corpse Got Up and Danced--A Unique Business by One Man
--Buying the Kangaroo Skin--The Approach to Adelaide--Everything Comes to
Him who Waits--A Healthy Religious sphere--What is the Matter with the
Specter?
CHAPTER XIX.
The Botanical Gardens--Contributions from all Countries--The
Zoological Gardens of Adelaide--The Laughing Jackass--The Dingo--A
Misnamed Province--Telegraphing from Melbourne to San Francisco--A Mania
for Holidays--The Temperature--The Death Rate--Celebration of the
Reading of the Proclamation of 1836--Some old Settlers at the
Commemoration--Their Staying Powers--The Intelligence of the Aboriginal
--The Antiquity of the Boomerang
CHAPTER XX.
A Caller--A Talk about Old Times--The Fox Hunt--An Accurate Judgment of
an Idiot--How We Passed the Custom Officers in Italy
CHAPTER XXI.
The "Weet-Weet"--Keeping down the Population--Victoria--Killing the
Aboriginals--Pioneer Days in Queensland--Material for a Drama--The Bush
--Pudding with Arsenic Revenge--A Right Spirit but a Wrong Method--Death of
Donga Billy
CHAPTER XXII.
Continued Description of Aboriginals--Manly Qualities--Dodging Balls
--Feats of Spring--Jumping--Where the Kangaroo Learned its Art 'Well
Digging--Endurance--Surgery--Artistic Abilities--Fennimore Cooper's Last
Chance--Australian Slang
CHAPTER XXIII.
To Horsham (Colony of Victoria)--Description of Horsham--At the Hotel
--Pepper Tree-The Agricultural College, Forty Pupils--High Temperature
--Width of Road in Chains, Perches, etc.--The Bird with a Forgettable
Name--The Magpie and the Lady--Fruit Trees--Soils--Sheep Shearing--To Stawell
--Gold Mining Country--$75,000 per Month Income and able to Keep House
--Fine Grapes and Wine--The Dryest Community on Earth--The Three Sisters
--Gum Trees and Water
CHAPTER XXIV.
Road to Ballarat--The City--Great Gold Strike, 1851--Rush for Australia
--"Great Nuggets"--Taxation--Revolt and Victory--Peter Lalor and the
Eureka Stockade--"Pencil Mark"--Fine Statuary at Ballarat--Population
--Ballarat English
CHAPTER XXV.
Bound for Bendigo--The Priest at Castlemaine--Time Saved by Walking
--Description of Bendigo--A Valuable Nugget--Perseverence and Success
--Mr. Blank and His Influence--Conveyance of an Idea--I Had to Like the
Irishman--Corrigan Castle, and the Mark Twain Club--My Bascom Mystery
Solved
CHAPTER XXVI.
Where New Zealand Is--But Few Know--Things People Think They Know--The
Yale Professor and His Visitor from N. Z.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The South Pole Swell--Tasmania--Extermination of the Natives--The Picture
Proclamation--The Conciliator--The Formidable Sixteen
CHAPTER XXVIII.
When the Moment Comes the Man Appears--Why Ed. Jackson called on
Commodore Vanderbilt--Their Interview--Welcome to the Child of His Friend
--A Big Time but under Inspection--Sent on Important Business--A Visit to
the Boys on the Boat
CHAPTER XXIX:
Tasmania, Early Days--Description of the Town of Hobart--An Englishman's
Love of Home Surroundings--Neatest City on Earth--The Museum--A Parrot
with an Acquired Taste--Glass Arrow Beads--Refuge for the Indigent too
healthy
CHAPTER XXX.
Arrival at Bluff, N. Z.--Where the Rabbit Plague Began--The Natural Enemy
of the Rabbit--Dunedin--A Lovely Town--Visit to Dr. Hockin--His Museum
--A Liquified Caterpillar--The Unperfected Tape Worm--The Public Museum and
Picture
CHAPTER XXXI. The Express Train--"A Hell of a Hotel at Maryborough"
--Clocks and Bells--Railroad Service.
CHAPTER XXXII.
Description of the Town of Christ Church--A Fine Museum--Jade-stone
Trinkets--The Great Man--The First Maori in New Zealand--Women Voters
--"Person" in New Zealand Law Includes Woman--Taming an Ornithorhynchus
--A Voyage in the 'Flora' from Lyttelton--Cattle Stalls for Everybody
--A Wonderful Time.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Town of Nelson--"The Mongatapu Murders," the Great Event of the Town
--Burgess' Confession--Summit of Mount Eden--Rotorua and the Hot Lakes
and Geysers--Thermal Springs District--Kauri Gum--Tangariwa Mountains
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The Bay of Gisborne--Taking in Passengers by the Yard Arm--The Green
Ballarat Fly--False Teeth--From Napier to Hastings by the Ballarat Fly
Train--Kauri Trees--A Case of Mental Telegraphy
CHAPTER XXXV.
Fifty Miles in Four Hours--Comfortable Cars--Town of Wauganui--Plenty of
Maoris--On the Increase--Compliments to the Maoris--The Missionary Ways
all Wrong--The Tabu among the Maoris--A Mysterious Sign--Curious
War-monuments--Wellington
CHAPTER XXXVI.
The Poems of Mrs. Moore--The Sad Fate of William Upson--A Fellow Traveler
Imitating the Prince of Wales--A Would-be Dude--Arrival at Sydney
--Curious Town Names with Poem
CHAPTER XXXVII.
From Sydney for Ceylon--A Lascar Crew--A Fine Ship--Three Cats and a
Basket of Kittens--Dinner Conversations--Veuve Cliquot Wine--At Anchor in
King George's Sound Albany Harbor--More Cats--A Vulture on Board--Nearing
the Equator again--Dressing for Dinner--Ceylon, Hotel Bristol--Servant
Brampy--A Feminine Man--Japanese Jinriksha or Cart--Scenes in Ceylon--A
Missionary School--Insincerity of Clothes
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Steamer Rosettes to Bombay--Limes 14 cents a Barrel--Bombay, a Bewitching
City--Descriptions of People and Dress--Woman as a Road Decoration
--India, the Land of Dreams and Romance--Fourteen Porters to Carry Baggage
--Correcting a Servant--Killing a Slave--Arranging a Bedroom--Three Hours'
Work and a Terrible Racket--The Bird of Birds, the Indian Crow
CHAPTER XXXIX.
God Vishnu, 108 Names--Change of Titles or Hunting for an Heir--Bombay as
a Kaleidoscope--The Native's Man Servant--Servants' Recommendations--How
Manuel got his Name and his English--Satan--A Visit from God
CHAPTER XL.
The Government House at Malabar Point--Mansion of Kumar Shri Samatsin Hji
Bahadur--The Indian Princess--A Difficult Game--Wardrobe and Jewels
--Ceremonials--Decorations when Leaving--The Towers of Silence--A Funeral
CHAPTER XLI.
Jain Temple--Mr. Roychand's Bungalow--A Decorated Six-Gun Prince--Human
Fireworks--European Dress, Past and Present--Complexions--Advantages with
the Zulu--Festivities at the Bungalow-Nautch Dancers--Entrance of the
Prince--Address to the Prince
CHAPTER XLII.
A Hindoo Betrothal, midnight, Sleepers on the ground, Home of the Bride
of Twelve Years Dressed as a Boy--Illumination Nautch Girls--Imitating
Snakes--Later--Illuminated Porch Filled with Sleepers--The Plague
CHAPTER XLIII
Murder Trial in Bombay--Confidence Swindlers--Some Specialities of India
--The Plague, Juggernaut, Suttee, etc.--Everything on Gigantic Scale
--India First in Everything--80 States, more Custom Houses than Cats--Rich
Ground for Thug Society
CHAPTER XLIV.
Thug Book--Supplies for Traveling, Bedding, and other Freight--Scene at
Railway Station--Making Way for White Man--Waiting Passengers, High and
Low Caste, Touch in the cars--Our Car--Beds made up--Dreaming of Thugs
--Baroda--Meet Friends--Indian Well--The Old Town--Narrow Streets--A Mad
Elephant
CHAPTER XLV.
Elephant Riding--Howdahs--The New Palace--The Prince's Excursion--Gold
and Silver Artillery--A Vice-royal Visit--Remarkable Dog--The Bench Show
--Augustin Daly's Back Door--Fakeer
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Thugs--Government Efforts to Exterminate them--Choking a Victim A
Fakeer Spared--Thief Strangled
CHAPTER XLVII.
Thugs, Continued--Record of Murders--A Joy of Hunting and Killing Men
--Gordon Gumming--Killing an Elephant--Family Affection among Thugs
--Burial Places
CHAPTER XLVIII.
Starting for Allahabad--Lower Berths in Sleepers--Elderly Ladies have
Preference of Berths--An American Lady Takes One Anyhow--How Smythe Lost
his Berth--How He Got Even--The Suttee
CHAPTER XLIX.
Pyjamas--Day Scene in India--Clothed in a Turban and a Pocket
Handkerchief--Land Parceled Out--Established Village Servants--Witches in
Families--Hereditary Midwifery--Destruction of Girl Babies--Wedding
Display--Tiger-Persuader--Hailstorm Discourages--The Tyranny of the
Sweeper--Elephant Driver--Water Carrier--Curious Rivers--Arrival at
Allahabad--English Quarter--Lecture Hall Like a Snowstorm--Private
Carriages--A Milliner--Early Morning--The Squatting Servant--A Religious
Fair
CHAPTER L.
On the Road to Benares--Dust and Waiting--The Bejeweled Crowd--A Native
Prince and his Guard--Zenana Lady--The Extremes of Fashion--The Hotel at
Benares--An Annex a Mile Away--Doors in India--The Peepul Tree--Warning
against Cold Baths--A Strange Fruit--Description of Benares--The
Beginning of Creation--Pilgrims to Benares--A Priest with a Good Business
Stand--Protestant Missionary--The Trinity Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu
--Religion the Business at Benares
CHAPTER LI.
Benares a Religious Temple--A Guide for Pilgrims to Save Time in Securing
Salvation
CHAPTER LII.
A Curious Way to Secure Salvation--The Banks of the Ganges--Architecture
Represents Piety--A Trip on the River--Bathers and their Costumes
--Drinking the Water--A Scientific Test of the Nasty Purifier--Hindoo Faith
in the Ganges--A Cremation--Remembrances of the Suttee--All Life Sacred
Except Human Life--The Goddess Bhowanee, and the Sacrificers--Sacred
Monkeys--Ugly Idols Everywhere--Two White Minarets--A Great View with a
Monkey in it--A Picture on the Water
CHAPTER LIII.
Still in Benares--Another Living God--Why Things are Wonderful--Sri 108
Utterly Perfect--How He Came so--Our Visit to Sri--A Friendly Deity
Exchanging Autographs and Books--Sri's Pupil--An Interesting Man
--Reverence and Irreverence--Dancing in a Sepulchre
CHAPTER LIV.
Rail to Calcutta--Population--The "City of Palaces"--A Fluted
Candle-stick--Ochterlony--Newspaper Correspondence--Average Knowledge of
Countries--A Wrong Idea of Chicago--Calcutta and the Black Hole
--Description of the Horrors--Those Who Lived--The Botanical Gardens--The
Afternoon Turnout--Grand Review--Military Tournament--Excursion on the
Hoogly--The Museum--What Winter Means Calcutta
CHAPTER LV
On the Road Again--Flannels in Order--Across Country--From Greenland's
Icy Mountain--Swapping Civilization--No Field women in India--How it is
in Other Countries--Canvas-covered Cars--The Tiger Country--My First Hunt
Some Elephants Get Away--The Plains of India--The Ghurkas--Women for
Pack-Horses--A Substitute for a Cab--Darjeeling--The Hotel--The Highest
Thing in the Himalayas--The Club--Kinchinjunga and Mt. Everest
--Thibetans--The Prayer Wheel--People Going to the Bazar
CHAPTER LVI.
On the Road Again--The Hand-Car--A Thirty-five-mile Slide--The Banyan
Tree--A Dramatic Performance--The Railroad--The Half-way House--The Brain
Fever Bird--The Coppersmith Bird--Nightingales and Cue Owls
CHAPTER LVII.
India the Most Extraordinary Country on Earth--Nothing Forgotten--The
Land of Wonders--Annual Statistics Everywhere about Violence--Tiger vs.
Man--A Handsome Fight--Annual Man Killing and Tiger Killing--Other
Animals--Snakes--Insurance and Snake Tables--The Cobra Bite--Muzaffurpore
--Dinapore--A Train that Stopped for Gossip--Six Hours for Thirty-five
Miles--A Rupee to the Engineer--Ninety Miles an Hour--Again to Benares,
the Piety Hive To Lucknow
CHAPTER LVIII.
The Great Mutiny--The Massacre in Cawnpore--Terrible Scenes in Lucknow
--The Residency--The Siege
CHAPTER LIX.
A Visit to the Residency--Cawnpore--The Adjutant Bird and the Hindoo
Corpse--The Tai Mahal--The True Conception--The Ice Storm--True Gems
--Syrian Fountains--An Exaggerated Niagara
CHAPTER LX.
To Lahore--The Governor's Elephant--Taking a Ride-No Danger from
Collision--Rawal Pindi--Back to Delhi--An Orientalized Englishman
--Monkeys and the Paint-pot--Monkey Crying over my Note-book--Arrival at
Jeypore--In Rajputana--Watching Servants--The Jeypore Hotel--Our Old and
New Satan--Satan as a Liar--The Museum--A Street Show--Blocks of Houses
--A Religious Procession
CHAPTER LXI.
Methods in American Deaf and Dumb Asylums--Methods in the Public Schools
--A Letter from a youth in Punjab--Highly Educated Service--A Damage to
the Country--A Little Book from Calcutta--Writing Poor English
--Embarrassed by a Beggar Girl--A Specimen Letter--An Application for
Employment--A Calcutta School Examination--Two Samples of
Literature
CHAPTER LXII.
Sail from Calcutta to Madras--Thence to Ceylon--Thence for Mauritius
--The Indian Ocean--Our Captain's Peculiarity The Scot Has one too--The
Flying-fish that Went Hunting in the Field--Fined for Smuggling--Lots of
pets on Board--The Color of the Sea--The Most Important Member of
Nature's Family--The Captain's Story of Cold Weather--Omissions in the
Ship's Library--Washing Decks--Pyjamas on Deck--The Cat's Toilet--No
Interest in the Bulletin--Perfect Rest--The Milky Way and the Magellan
Clouds--Mauritius--Port Louis--A Hot Country--Under French Control
--A Variety of People and Complexions--Train to Curepipe--A Wonderful
Office-holder--The Wooden Peg Ornament--The Prominent Historical Event of
Mauritius--"Paul and Virginia"--One of Virginia's Wedding Gifts--Heaven
Copied after Mauritius--Early History of Mauritius--Quarantines
--Population of all Kinds--What the World Consists of--Where Russia and
Germany are--A Picture of Milan Cathedral--Newspapers--The Language--Best
Sugar in the World--Literature of Mauritius
CHAPTER LXIII.
Port Louis--Matches no Good--Good Roads--Death Notices--Why European
Nations Rob Each Other--What Immigrants to Mauritius Do--Population
--Labor Wages--The Camaron--The Palmiste and other Eatables--Monkeys--The
Cyclone of 1892--Mauritius a Sunday Landscape
CHAPTER LXIV.
The Steamer "Arundel Castle"--Poor Beds in Ships--The Beds in Noah's Ark
--Getting a Rest in Europe--Ship in Sight--Mozambique Channel--The
Engineer and the Band--Thackeray's "Madagascar"--Africanders Going Home
--Singing on the After Deck--An Out-of-Place Story--Dynamite Explosion in
Johannesburg--Entering Delagoa Bay--Ashore--A Hot Winter--Small Town--No
Sights--No Carriages--Working Women--Barnum's Purchase of Shakespeare's
Birthplace, Jumbo, and the Nelson Monument--Arrival at Durban
CHAPTER LXV.
Royal Hotel Durban--Bells that Did not Ring--Early Inquiries for Comforts
--Change of Temperature after Sunset-Rickhaws--The Hotel Chameleon
--Natives not out after the Bell--Preponderance of Blacks in Natal--Hair
Fashions in Natal--Zulus for Police--A Drive round the Berea--The Cactus
and other Trees--Religion a Vital Matter--Peculiar Views about Babies
--Zulu Kings--A Trappist Monastery--Transvaal Politics--Reasons why the
Trouble came About
CHAPTER LXVI.
Jameson over the Border--His Defeat and Capture--Sent to England for
Trial--Arrest of Citizens by the Boers--Commuted sentences--Final Release
of all but Two--Interesting Days for a Stranger--Hard to Understand
Either Side--What the Reformers Expected to Accomplish--How They Proposed
to do it--Testimonies a Year Later--A "Woman's Part"--The Truth of the
South African Situation--"Jameson's Ride"--A Poem
CHAPTER LXVIL
Jameson's Raid--The Reform Committee's Difficult Task--Possible Plans
--Advice that Jameson Ought to Have--The War of 1881 and its Lessons
--Statistics of Losses of the Combatants--Jameson's Battles--Losses on Both
Sides--The Military Errors--How the Warfare Should Have Been Carried on
to Be Successful
CHAPTER LXVIII.
Judicious Mr. Rhodes--What South Africa Consists of--Johannesburg--The
Gold Mines--The Heaven of American Engineers--What the Author Knows about
Mining--Description of the Boer--What Should be Expected of Him--What Was
A Dizzy Jump for Rhodes--Taxes--Rhodesian Method of Reducing Native
Population--Journeying in Cape Colony--The Cars--The Country--The
Weather--Tamed Blacks--Familiar Figures in King William's Town--Boer
Dress--Boer Country Life--Sleeping Accommodations--The Reformers in Boer
Prison--Torturing a Black Prisoner
CHAPTER LXIX.
An Absorbing Novelty--The Kimberley Diamond Mines--Discovery of Diamonds
--The Wronged Stranger--Where the Gems Are--A Judicious Change of
Boundary--Modern Machinery and Appliances--Thrilling Excitement in
Finding a Diamond--Testing a Diamond--Fences--Deep Mining by Natives in
the Compound--Stealing--Reward for the Biggest Diamond--A Fortune in
Wine--The Great Diamond--Office of the De Beer Co.--Sorting the Gems
--Cape Town--The Most Imposing Man in British Provinces--Various Reasons
for his Supremacy--How He Makes Friends
CONCLUSION.
Table Rock--Table Bay--The Castle--Government and Parliament--The Club
--Dutch Mansions and their Hospitality--Dr. John Barry and his Doings--On
the Ship Norman--Madeira--Arrived in Southampton
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR
CHAPTER I.
A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
The starting point of this lecturing-trip around the world was Paris,
where we had been living a year or two.
We sailed for America, and there made certain preparations. This took
but little time. Two members of my family elected to go with me. Also a
carbuncle. The dictionary says a carbuncle is a kind of jewel. Humor is
out of place in a dictionary.
We started westward from New York in midsummer, with Major Pond to manage
the platform-business as far as the Pacific. It was warm work, all the
way, and the last fortnight of it was suffocatingly smoky, for in Oregon
and Columbia the forest fires were raging. We had an added week of smoke
at the seaboard, where we were obliged awhile for our ship. She had been
getting herself ashore in the smoke, and she had to be docked and
repaired.
We sailed at last; and so ended a snail-paced march across the continent,
which had lasted forty days.
We moved westward about mid-afternoon over a rippled and summer sea; an
enticing sea, a clean and cool sea, and apparently a welcome sea to all
on board; it certainly was to the distressful dustings and smokings and
swelterings of the past weeks. The voyage would furnish a three-weeks
holiday, with hardly a break in it. We had the whole Pacific Ocean in
front of us, with nothing to do but do nothing and be comfortable. The
city of Victoria was twinkling dim in the deep heart of her smoke-cloud,
and getting ready to vanish and now we closed the field-glasses and sat
down on our steamer chairs contented and at peace. But they went to
wreck and ruin under us and brought us to shame before all the
passengers. They had been furnished by the largest furniture-dealing
house in Victoria, and were worth a couple of farthings a dozen, though
they had cost us the price of honest chairs. In the Pacific and Indian
Oceans one must still bring his own deck-chair on board or go without,
just as in the old forgotten Atlantic times--those Dark Ages of sea
travel.
Ours was a reasonably comfortable ship, with the customary sea-going fare
--plenty of good food furnished by the Deity and cooked by the devil.
The discipline observable on board was perhaps as good as it is anywhere
in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The ship was not very well arranged
for tropical service; but that is nothing, for this is the rule for ships
which ply in the tropics. She had an over-supply of cockroaches, but
this is also the rule with ships doing business in the summer seas--at
least such as have been long in service. Our young captain was a very
handsome man, tall and perfectly formed, the very figure to show up a
smart uniform's best effects. He was a man of the best intentions and
was polite and courteous even to courtliness. There was a soft and
finish about his manners which made whatever place he happened to be in
seem for the moment a drawing room. He avoided the smoking room. He had
no vices. He did not smoke or chew tobacco or take snuff; he did not
swear, or use slang or rude, or coarse, or indelicate language, or make
puns, or tell anecdotes, or laugh intemperately, or raise his voice above
the moderate pitch enjoined by the canons of good form. When he gave an
order, his manner modified it into a request. After dinner he and his
officers joined the ladies and gentlemen in the ladies' saloon, and
shared in the singing and piano playing, and helped turn the music. He
had a sweet and sympathetic tenor voice, and used it with taste and
effect the music he played whist there, always with the same partner and
opponents, until the ladies' bedtime. The electric lights burned there
as late as the ladies and their friends might desire; but they were not
allowed to burn in the smoking-room after eleven. There were many laws
on the ship's statute book of course; but so far as I could see, this and
one other were the only ones that were rigidly enforced. The captain
explained that he enforced this one because his own cabin adjoined the
smoking-room, and the smell of tobacco smoke made him sick. I did not
see how our smoke could reach him, for the smoking-room and his cabin
were on the upper deck, targets for all the winds that blew; and besides
there was no crack of communication between them, no opening of any sort
in the solid intervening bulkhead. Still, to a delicate stomach even
imaginary smoke can convey damage.
The captain, with his gentle nature, his polish, his sweetness, his moral
and verbal purity, seemed pathetically out of place in his rude and
autocratic vocation. It seemed another instance of the irony of fate.
He was going home under a cloud. The passengers knew about his trouble,
and were sorry for him. Approaching Vancouver through a narrow and
difficult passage densely befogged with smoke from the forest fires, he
had had the ill-luck to lose his bearings and get his ship on the rocks.
A matter like this would rank merely as an error with you and me; it
ranks as a crime with the directors of steamship companies. The captain
had been tried by the Admiralty Court at Vancouver, and its verdict had
acquitted him of blame. But that was insufficient comfort. A sterner
court would examine the case in Sydney--the Court of Directors, the lords
of a company in whose ships the captain had served as mate a number of
years. This was his first voyage as captain.
The officers of our ship were hearty and companionable young men, and
they entered into the general amusements and helped the passengers pass
the time. Voyages in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are but pleasure
excursions for all hands. Our purser was a young Scotchman who was
equipped with a grit that was remarkable. He was an invalid, and looked
it, as far as his body was concerned, but illness could not subdue his
spirit. He was full of life, and had a gay and capable tongue. To all
appearances he was a sick man without being aware of it, for he did not
talk about his ailments, and his bearing and conduct were those of a
person in robust health; yet he was the prey, at intervals, of ghastly
sieges of pain in his heart. These lasted many hours, and while the
attack continued he could neither sit nor lie. In one instance he stood
on his feet twenty-four hours fighting for his life with these sharp
agonies, and yet was as full of life and cheer and activity
the next day as if nothing had happened.
The brightest passenger in the ship, and the most interesting and
felicitous talker, was a young Canadian who was not able to let the
whisky bottle alone. He was of a rich and powerful family, and could have
had a distinguished career and abundance of effective help toward it if
he could have conquered his appetite for drink; but he could not do it,
so his great equipment of talent was of no use to him. He had often taken
the pledge to drink no more, and was a good sample of what that sort of
unwisdom can do for a man--for a man with anything short of an iron will.
The system is wrong in two ways: it does not strike at the root of the
trouble, for one thing, and to make a pledge of any kind is to declare
war against nature; for a pledge is a chain that is always clanking and
reminding the wearer of it that he is not a free man.
I have said that the system does not strike at the root of the trouble,
and I venture to repeat that. The root is not the drinking, but the
desire to drink. These are very different things. The one merely
requires will--and a great deal of it, both as to bulk and staying
capacity--the other merely requires watchfulness--and for no long time.
The desire of course precedes the act, and should have one's first
attention; it can do but little good to refuse the act over and over
again, always leaving the desire unmolested, unconquered; the desire will
continue to assert itself, and will be almost sure to win in the long
run. When the desire intrudes, it should be at once banished out of the
mind. One should be on the watch for it all the time--otherwise it will
get in. It must be taken in time and not allowed to get a lodgment. A
desire constantly repulsed for a fortnight should die, then. That should
cure the drinking habit. The system of refusing the mere act of
drinking, and leaving the desire in full force, is unintelligent war
tactics, it seems to me. I used to take pledges--and soon violate them.
My will was not strong, and I could not help it. And then, to be tied in
any way naturally irks an otherwise free person and makes him chafe in
his bonds and want to get his liberty. But when I finally ceased from
taking definite pledges, and merely resolved that I would kill an
injurious desire, but leave myself free to resume the desire and the
habit whenever I should choose to do so, I had no more trouble. In five
days I drove out the desire to smoke and was not obliged to keep watch
after that; and I never experienced any strong desire to smoke again. At
the end of a year and a quarter of idleness I began to write a book, and
presently found that the pen was strangely reluctant to go. I tried a
smoke to see if that would help me out of the difficulty. It did. I
smoked eight or ten cigars and as many pipes a day for five months;
finished the book, and did not smoke again until a year had gone by and
another book had to be begun.
I can quit any of my nineteen injurious habits at any time, and without
discomfort or inconvenience. I think that the Dr. Tanners and those
others who go forty days without eating do it by resolutely keeping out
the desire to eat, in the beginning, and that after a few hours the
desire is discouraged and comes no more.
Once I tried my scheme in a large medical way. I had been confined to my
bed several days with lumbago. My case refused to improve. Finally the
doctor said,--
"My remedies have no fair chance. Consider what they have to fight,
besides the lumbago. You smoke extravagantly, don't you?"
"Yes."
"You take coffee immoderately?"
"Yes."
"And some tea?"
"Yes."
"You eat all kinds of things that are dissatisfied with each other's
company?"
"Yes."
"You drink two hot Scotches every night?"
"Yes."
"Very well, there you see what I have to contend against. We can't make
progress the way the matter stands. You must make a reduction in these
things; you must cut down your consumption of them considerably for some
days."
"I can't, doctor."
"Why can't you."
"I lack the will-power. I can cut them off entirely, but I can't merely
moderate them."
He said that that would answer, and said he would come around in
twenty-four hours and begin work again. He was taken ill himself and
could not come; but I did not need him. I cut off all those things for
two days and nights; in fact, I cut off all kinds of food, too, and all
drinks except water, and at the end of the forty-eight hours the lumbago
was discouraged and left me. I was a well man; so I gave thanks and took
to those delicacies again.
It seemed a valuable medical course, and I recommended it to a lady. She
had run down and down and down, and had at last reached a point where
medicines no longer had any helpful effect upon her. I said I knew I
could put her upon her feet in a week. It brightened her up, it filled
her with hope, and she said she would do everything I told her to do. So
I said she must stop swearing and drinking, and smoking and eating for
four days, and then she would be all right again. And it would have
happened just so, I know it; but she said she could not stop swearing,
and smoking, and drinking, because she had never done those things. So
there it was. She had neglected her habits, and hadn't any. Now that
they would have come good, there were none in stock. She had nothing to
fall back on. She was a sinking vessel, with no freight in her to throw
over lighten ship withal. Why, even one or two little bad habits could
have saved her, but she was just a moral pauper. When she could have
acquired them she was dissuaded by her parents, who were ignorant people
though reared in the best society, and it was too late to begin now. It
seemed such a pity; but there was no help for it. These things ought to
be attended to while a person is young; otherwise, when age and disease
come, there is nothing effectual to fight them with.
When I was a youth I used to take all kinds of pledges, and do my best to
keep them, but I never could, because I didn't strike at the root of the
habit--the desire; I generally broke down within the month. Once I tried
limiting a habit. That worked tolerably well for a while. I pledged
myself to smoke but one cigar a day. I kept the cigar waiting until
bedtime, then I had a luxurious time with it. But desire persecuted me
every day and all day long; so, within the week I found myself hunting
for larger cigars than I had been used to smoke; then larger ones still,
and still larger ones. Within the fortnight I was getting cigars made
for me--on a yet larger pattern. They still grew and grew in size.
Within the month my cigar had grown to such proportions that I could have
used it as a crutch. It now seemed to me that a one-cigar limit was no
real protection to a person, so I knocked my pledge on the head and
resumed my liberty.
To go back to that young Canadian. He was a "remittance man," the first
one I had ever seen or heard of. Passengers explained the term to me.
They said that dissipated ne'er-do-wells belonging to important families
in England and Canada were not cast off by their people while there was
any hope of reforming them, but when that last hope perished at last, the
ne'er-do-well was sent abroad to get him out of the way. He was shipped
off with just enough money in his pocket--no, in the purser's pocket--for
the needs of the voyage--and when he reached his destined port he would
find a remittance awaiting him there. Not a large one, but just enough
to keep him a month. A similar remittance would come monthly thereafter.
It was the remittance-man's custom to pay his month's board and lodging
straightway--a duty which his landlord did not allow him to forget--then
spree away the rest of his money in a single night, then brood and mope
and grieve in idleness till the next remittance came. It is a pathetic
life.
We had other remittance-men on board, it was said. At least they said
they were R. M.'s. There were two. But they did not resemble the
Canadian; they lacked his tidiness, and his brains, and his gentlemanly
ways, and his resolute spirit, and his humanities and generosities. One
of them was a lad of nineteen or twenty, and he was a good deal of a
ruin, as to clothes, and morals, and general aspect. He said he was a
scion of a ducal house in England, and had been shipped to Canada for the
house's relief, that he had fallen into trouble there, and was now being
shipped to Australia. He said he had no title. Beyond this remark he
was economical of the truth. The first thing he did in Australia was to
get into the lockup, and the next thing he did was to proclaim himself an
earl in the police court in the morning and fail to prove it.
CHAPTER II.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
About four days out from Victoria we plunged into hot weather, and all
the male passengers put on white linen clothes. One or two days later we
crossed the 25th parallel of north latitude, and then, by order, the
officers of the ship laid away their blue uniforms and came out in white
linen ones. All the ladies were in white by this time. This prevalence
of snowy costumes gave the promenade deck an invitingly cool, and
cheerful and picnicky aspect.
