St. Jeanne d’Arc’s Voices and Visions – Eyewitness Accounts, Part 14
PART 14 ‘I die through you,’ she said, and these were the last words she spoke to any upon earth. It is so soon – ah, it is so soon The young can sink into abysses of despondency, and it was so with Noël 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 pretence; for I was caught off my guard, and was so moved and so exalted to be so honoured by her that I must have shown my feeling in my face and manner. ‘A message for me, you 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 labours 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 mutterings 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 weShall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,O rise upon our sight!’ There was no hope any more. I knew it now. I knew that Joan’s letter was a message to Noël 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 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 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 be delivered over to the secular arm. Cauchon thanked them. Then he sent orders that Joan 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
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