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PART 11
‘Have you ever embraced St Marguerite and St Catherine?’‘Yes, both of them.’
Hurrying the trial quickly to an end

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 candour-
‘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 beast 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 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. Then 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 you 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 that was coming; I was troubled and ashamed. ‘For instance, I did not say, “Deliver up to the Maid” (rendez a la Pucelle); I said, “Deliver up to the King” (rendez au Roi); and I did not call myself “Commander-in-Chief” (chef de guerre). Al 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 to 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’s 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 language 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! a grave affront. They could not be brought into court and punished for contempt, but the tribunal 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 jewellery? – crowns, rings, ear-rings?’
To Joan, questions like this 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 grandmother surprised these creatures on a summer’s night dancing under the tree called L’Arbre Fée de Bourlemont. Is it not possible that your pretended saints and angels 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 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 where 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 recognise 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 court and 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) criticising 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 Noël 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 30. 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 was our understanding of it – Noël’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 thought 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 heavy 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’Alençon 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 come 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 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 sensitivenesses and tendernesses 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 Compiègne, 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 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 her 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 believed 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. This 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 afterwards.’
‘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.
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 three-score 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 call not a single witness in her defence, 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 than 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 today 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 a 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 questions 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 these 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 honours 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 armour 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 honour?’
‘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 worshipped 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 worshipped, it was enough; she was guilty of mortal sin. Curious logic, one must say.
‘Did you not stand sponsor for some children baptised at Rheims?’
‘At Troyes I did, and at St-Denis; and I named the boys Charles, in honour 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 armour.’
It was almost a concession! almost a half-surrender of 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 straightway baptised, 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 succour of Compiègne.’
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.’
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 candour, 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 favourable 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 Noël 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 tenth of March the secret trial began. A week had passed since I had seen Joan. Her appearance gave me a 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 t 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 naïve 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 Fée de Bourlemont, did you do it in honour 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 honour and the most 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 honour 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 you 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 savoured of pride. That sort of pride would move one to seek 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 naïveté, ‘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 had been wounded to make such offering there. I had been wounded before Paris.’
Nothing appealed to those 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 you hopes of victory in yourself or in your Standard?’
‘In neither. In God, and not otherwhere.’
‘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 honour.’
[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 odour, and escapes in the transmission. Her words were these: ‘Il avait été a la peine, c’etait bien raison qu’il fut a l’honneur.’ Monseigneur Ricard, Honarary Vicar-General to the Archbishop of Aix, finely speaks of it (‘Jean d’Arc la Vénérable,’ 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.’]
How simple it is, and how beautiful! And how it beggars the studied 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.
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 with our poor, good, windy, big, hard-fighting and most dear and lamented comrade the Standard-bearer, who fell in honourable battle and sleeps in 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 marvellous 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 laboured 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 business-like, and her statement of it as characteristically simple and straight-forward:
‘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 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 Noël 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 send 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 for ever – 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 real 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 that the sudden bursting in of our old soldiers with 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 my 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.’ Than she turned upon the judge and said, ‘Why do you make a difficulty where 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 heaven; and the Church Militant, which is our Holy Father the Pope, Vicar of God, the prelates, the clergy and all good Christians and Catholics, and which Church has its seat in the earth, is governed by the Holy Spirit, and cannot err.
‘Will you not submit those matter 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 straightly 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 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 then 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 fell a thunder-clap 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 known! 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 all the long days’ 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 honoured and blest.
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.’