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St. Jeanne d’Arc’s Voices and Visions – Eyewitness Accounts, Part 12

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PART 12

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

Indictment -The Twelve Lies

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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, Maitre 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 honour 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 burning and damning 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 ever 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 Lohier’s hints, he had the cold effrontery to make Joan a proposition which I think will surprise you when you hear it. He said that this court, recognising 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 straightly 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 authorised 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 honours, 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.

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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 charged 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,’ she said, ‘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 is was another of their treacherous projects. Yes, if they could but succeed in getting her to formally discard it, they would 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 then 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 honour 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 armour.’

That she and her family had been ennobled by the King was charged against her as evidence that the source of her deeds was 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.

imageedit 609 9322742867Possibly 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 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.

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 command of God in fulfilment of her mission. Those she reserved for the judgement of God. She refused to recognise 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 their chief streets, chattering and seeking for news; for a report had gone abroad that Joan of Arc was sick unto 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.

imageedit 617 4950119004Then 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; 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 to 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 realise that this frail 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 life 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 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 judgement – that is to their judgement – 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 it 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 sceptre stretches beyond the furthest constellation that twinkles in the sky, whose authority is over the millions that live in 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 earthly empire as earthly empire 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 an 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.

imageedit 619 75696064661Her 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 baptised, and a good Christian I will die.’

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 is resembled a book. He began flowingly, 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; the Joan dropped in a remark which completed his trouble. She said:

‘Read your book – and then I will answer you!’

Why, it was almost cruel the way those mouldy 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 to you 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 that 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 supposititious 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 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.

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 [hog, pig] 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 [Cochonner, to litter, to farrow; also, ‘to make a mess of!’] again;’ and every time a 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 to the next group, proud of his wit, and happy to work it off again –

‘’Ods 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!’

imageedit 612 80221793371Cauchon 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 there, 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 mitre irreverently cocked on the side of their heads.

Cauchon raged and cursed over his defeats and his impotence during seven days, 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 our 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. [The lower half of it remains today just as it was then; the upper half is of a later date]

We entered the circular room on the ground floor, and I saw what turned me sick – the instruments of torture and the executions 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 colour for their bloody trade. This 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 puling her limbs out of their sockets. It seemed to me that I could hear the bones snap and the flesh tear apart.

After a little, Joan arrived and was brought in. She saw the rack, she saw its 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 resume of her ‘crimes’ was read to her. Then Cauchon made a solemn speech. In it 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.

His 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 –

imageedit 614 53029789401There 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 for ever; 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 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 afterwards 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 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 would 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 marvellous insight?’

The judges laid their heads together and began to talk low. 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 could 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 mitred 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 the 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.

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 but little to do, these ten days, so I spent them mainly in walks about the town with Noël. But there was no pleasure in them, our spirits being so burdened with cares, and the outlook for Joan growing so 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 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 realise 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 realise 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 ignoblest 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 with noble enthusiasms, the gift of turning hares into heroes, slaves and skulkers into battalions that march to death with songs upon 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.

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:

As to who the fiends were who were represented in Joan’s Voices;
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 did it. It found out who the 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 judgement 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 devils in Article No. 1 and proving them 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; and 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. Tomorrow, 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.

Tomorrow – 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; saw 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!

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