JEANNE D'ARC, HER LIFE AND DEATH

by Mrs. Oliphant

Author of "Makers of Florence, " "Makers of Venice, " etc. 

TO

COUSIN ANNIE (MRS. HARRY COGHILL)

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED IN LOVE OF OUR COMMON HEROINE AND IN REMEMBRANCEOF LONG AND FAITHFUL AFFECTION AND FRIENDSHIP

 PREPARER'S NOTE

 The original book for this text was published as a volume in a series "Heroes of the Nations, " edited by Evelyn Abbot, M. H. , Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and published by G. P. Putnam's Sons _The Knickerbocker Press_ in 1896. The title material includes the note:

 FACTA DUCIS VIVENT, OPEROSAQUE GLORIA RERUM--OVID, IN LIVIAM, 265. THE HERO'S DEEDS AND HARD-WON FAME SHALL LIVE. 

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER I — FRANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 1412-1423. 

CHAPTER II — DOMREMY AND VAUCOULEURS. 1424-1429. 

CHAPTER III — BEFORE THE KING. FEB. -APRIL, 1429. 

CHAPTER IV — THE RELIEF OF ORLEANS. MAY 1-8, 1429. 

CHAPTER V — THE CAMPAIGN OF THE LOIRE. JUNE, JULY, 1429. 

CHAPTER VI — THE CORONATION. JULY 17, 1429. 

CHAPTER VII — THE SECOND PERIOD. 1429-1430. 

CHAPTER VIII — DEFEAT AND DISCOURAGEMENT. AUTUMN, 1429. 

CHAPTER IX — COMPIÈGNE. 1430. 

CHAPTER X — THE CAPTIVE. MAY, 1430-JAN. , 1431. 

CHAPTER XI — THE JUDGES. 1431. 

CHAPTER XII — BEFORE THE TRIAL. LENT, 1431. 

CHAPTER XIII — THE PUBLIC EXAMINATION. FEBRUARY, 1431. 

CHAPTER XIV —THE EXAMINATION IN PRISON. LENT, 1431. 

CHAPTER XV — RE-EXAMINATION. MARCH-MAY, 1431. 

CHAPTER XVI — THE ABJURATION. MAY 24, 1431. 

CHAPTER XVIII — THE SACRIFICE. MAY 31, 1431. 

CHAPTER XVIII — AFTER. 

JEANNE D'ARC

CHAPTER I -- FRANCE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 1412-1423. 

It is no small effort for the mind, even of the most well-informed, howmuch more of those whose exact knowledge is not great (which is thecase with most readers, and alas! with most writers also), to transportitself out of this nineteenth century which we know so thoroughly, andwhich has trained us in all our present habits and modes of thought, into the fifteenth, four hundred years back in time, and worlds apartin every custom and action of life. What is there indeed the same inthe two ages? Nothing but the man and the woman, the living agents inspheres so different; nothing but love and grief, the affections andthe sufferings by which humanity is ruled and of which it is capable. Everything else is changed: the customs of life, and its methods, andeven its motives, the ruling principles of its continuance. Peace andmutual consideration, the policy which even in its selfish developmentsis so far good that it enables men to live together, making existencepossible, --scarcely existed in those days. The highest ideal was that ofwar, war no doubt sometimes for good ends, to redress wrongs, to avengeinjuries, to make crooked things straight--but yet always war, implyinga state of affairs in which the last thing that men thought of wasthe golden rule, and the highest attainment to be looked for was theposition of a protector, doer of justice, deliverer of the oppressed. Our aim now that no one should be oppressed, that every man shouldhave justice as by the order of nature, was a thing unthought of. Whatindividual help did feebly for the sufferer then, the laws do for usnow, without fear or favour: which is a much greater thing to saythan that the organisation of modern life, the mechanical helps, thecomforts, the easements of the modern world, had no existence in thosedays. We are often told that the poorest peasant in our own time hasaids to existence that had not been dreamt of for princes in the MiddleAges. Thirty years ago the world was mostly of opinion that the balancewas entirely on our side, and that in everything we were so much betteroff than our fathers, that comparison was impossible. Since then therehave been many revolutions of opinion, and we think it is now thegeneral conclusion of wise men, that one period has little to boastitself of against another, that one form of civilisation replacesanother without improving upon it, at least to the extent which appearson the surface. But yet the general prevalence of peace, interruptedonly by occasional wars, even when we recognise a certain largeand terrible utility in war itself, must always make a differenceincalculable between the condition of the nations now, and then. 

It is difficult, indeed, to imagine any concatenation of affairs whichcould reduce a country now to the condition in which France was in thebeginning of the fifteenth century. A strong and splendid kingdom, towhich in early ages one great man had given the force and supremacy ofa united nation, had fallen into a disintegration which seems almostincredible when regarded in the light of that warm flame of nationalitywhich now illumines, almost above all others, the French nation. ButFrenchmen were not Frenchmen, they were Burgundians, Armagnacs, Bretons, Provençaux five hundred years ago. The interests of one part of thekingdom were not those of the other. Unity had no existence. Princes ofthe same family were more furious enemies to each other, at the head oftheir respective fiefs and provinces, than the traditional foes of theirrace; and instead of meeting an invader with a united force of patrioticresistance, one or more of these subordinate rulers was sure to sidewith the invader and to execute greater atrocities against his own fleshand blood than anything the alien could do. 

When Charles VII. Of France began, nominally, his reign, his uncles andcousins, his nearest kinsmen, were as determinedly his opponents, as wasHenry V. Of England, whose frank object was to take the crown from hishead. The country was torn in pieces with different causes and cries. The English were but little farther off from the Parisian than was theBurgundian, and the English king was only a trifle less French thanwere the members of the royal family of France. These circumstances arelittle taken into consideration in face of the general history, in whicha careless reader sees nothing but the two nations pitted against eachother as they might be now, the French united in one strong and distinctnationality, the three kingdoms of Great Britain all welded into one. In the beginning of the fifteenth century the Scots fought on the Frenchside, against their intimate enemy of England, and if there had been anyunity in Ireland, the Irish would have done the same. The advantagesand disadvantages of subdivision were in full play. The Scots foughtfuriously against the English--and when the latter won, as was usuallythe case, the Scots contingent, whatever bounty might be shown to theFrench, was always exterminated. On the other side the Burgundians, theArmagnacs, and Royalists met each other almost more fiercely than thelatter encountered the English. Each country was convulsed by strugglesof its own, and fiercely sought its kindred foes in the ranks of itsmore honest and natural enemy. 

When we add to these strange circumstances the facts that the FrenchKing, Charles VI. , was mad, and incapable of any real share either inthe internal government of his country or in resistance to its invader:that his only son, the Dauphin, was no more than a foolish boy, led byincompetent councillors, and even of doubtful legitimacy, regarded withhesitation and uncertainty by many, everybody being willing to believethe worst of his mother, especially after the treaty of Troyes in whichshe virtually gave him up: that the King's brothers or cousins at thehead of their respective fiefs were all seeking their own advantage, andthat some of them, especially the Duke of Burgundy, had cruel wrongsto avenge: it will be more easily understood that France had reached aperiod of depression and apparent despair which no principle of nationalelasticity or new spring of national impulse was present to amend. Theextraordinary aspect of whole districts in so strong and populous acountry, which disowned the native monarch, and of towns and castlesinnumerable which were held by the native nobility in the name ofa foreign king, could scarcely have been possible under othercircumstances. Everything was out of joint. It is said to becharacteristic of the nation that it is unable to play publicly (aswe say) a losing game; but it is equally characteristic of the raceto forget its humiliations as if they had never been, and to come outintact when the fortune of war changes, more French than ever, almostunabashed and wholly uninjured, by the catastrophe which had seemedfatal. 

If we had any right to theorise on such a subject--which is a thing theFrench themselves above all other men love to do, --we should be disposedto say, that wars and revolutions, legislation and politics, are thingswhich go on over the head of France, so to speak--boilings on thesurface, with which the great personality of the nation if such a wordmay be used, has little to do, and cares but little for; while sheherself, the great race, neither giddy nor fickle, but unusuallyobstinate, tenacious, and sober, narrow even in the unwavering pursuitof a certain kind of well-being congenial to her--goes steadily on, less susceptible to temporary humiliation than many peoples much lessexcitable on the surface, and always coming back into sight when thecommotion is over, acquisitive, money-making, profit-loving, uninjuredin any essential particular by the most terrific of convulsions. This ofcourse is to be said more or less of every country, the strain ofcommon life being always, thank God, too strong for every temporarycommotion--but it is true in a special way of France:--witness theextraordinary manner in which in our own time, and under our own eyes, that wonderful country righted herself after the tremendous misfortunesof the Franco-German war, in which for a moment not only her prestige, her honour, but her money and credit seemed to be lost. 

It seems rather a paradox to point attention to the extraordinarytenacity of this basis of French character, the steady prudence andsolidity which in the end always triumph over the light heart and lighthead, the excitability and often rash and dangerous _élan_, which arepopularly supposed to be the chief distinguishing features of France--atthe very moment of beginning such a fairy tale, such a wonderfulembodiment of the visionary and ideal, as is the story of Jeanne d'Arc. To call it a fairy tale is, however, disrespectful: it is an angelicrevelation, a vision made into flesh and blood, the dream of a woman'sfancy, more ethereal, more impossible than that of any man--even apoet:--for the man, even in his most uncontrolled imaginations, carrieswith him a certain practical limitation of what can be--whereasthe woman at her highest is absolute, and disregards all bounds ofpossibility. The Maid of Orleans, the Virgin of France, is the solebeing of her kind who has ever attained full expression in this world. She can neither be classified, as her countrymen love to classify, nortraced to any system of evolution as we all attempt to do nowadays. Sheis the impossible verified and attained. She is the thing in every race, in every form of humanity, which the dreaming girl, the visionary maid, held in at every turn by innumerable restrictions, her feet bound, heractions restrained, not only by outward force, but by the law of hernature, more effectual still, --has desired to be. That voiceless poet, to whom what can be is nothing, but only what should be if miracle couldbe attained to fulfil her trance and rapture of desire--is held by noconditions, modified by no circumstances; and miracle is all around her, the most credible, the most real of powers, the very air she breathers. Jeanne of France is the very flower of this passion of the imagination. She is altogether impossible from beginning to end of her, inexplicable, alone, with neither rival nor even second in the one sole ineffablepath: yet all true as one of the oaks in her wood, as one of the flowersin her garden, simple, actual, made of the flesh and blood which arecommon to us all. 

And she is all the more real because it is France, impure, the countryof light loves and immodest passions, where all that is sensual comes tothe surface, and the courtesan is the queen of ignoble fancy, that hasbrought forth this most perfect embodiment of purity among the nations. This is of itself one of those miracles which captivate the mind andcharm the imagination, the living paradox in which the soul delights. How did she come out of that stolid peasant race, out of that distractedand ignoble age, out of riot and license and the fierce thirst for gain, and failure of every noble faculty? Who can tell? By the grace of God, by the inspiration of heaven, the only origins in which the student ofnature, which is over nature, can put any trust. No evolution, no systemof development, can explain Jeanne. There is but one of her and no morein all the astonished world. 

With the permission of the reader I will retain her natural andbeautiful name. To translate it into Joan seems quite unnecessary. Though she is the finest emblem to the world in general of that noble, fearless, and spotless Virginity which is one of the finest inspirationsof the mediæval mind, yet she is inherently French, though Francescarcely was in her time: and national, though as yet there were ratherthe elements of a nation than any indivisible People in that greatcountry. Was not she herself one of the strongest and purest threadsof gold to draw that broken race together and bind it irrevocably, beneficially, into one?

It is curious that it should have been from the farthest edge of Frenchterritory that this national deliverer came. It is a commonplace thata Borderer should be a more hot partisan of his own country against theother from which but a line divides him in fact, and scarcely so muchin race--than the calmer inhabitant of the midland country who knows nosuch press of constant antagonism; and Jeanne is another example of thiswell known fact. It is even a question still languidly discussed whetherJeanne and her family were actually on one side of the line or theother. "Il faut opter, " says M. Blaze de Bury, one of her latestbiographers, as if the peasant household of 1412 had inhabited anAlsatian cottage in 1872. When the line is drawn so closely, it isdifficult to determine, but Jeanne herself does not ever seem to haveentertained a moment's doubt on the subject, and she after all is thebest authority. Perhaps Villon was thinking more of his rhyme than ofabsolute fact when he spoke of "Jeanne la bonne Lorraine. " She was bornon the 5th of January, 1412, in the village of Domremy, on the banksof the Meuse, one of those little grey hamlets, with its little churchtower, and remains of a little chateau on the soft elevation of a moundnot sufficient for the name of hill--which are scattered everywherethrough those level countries, like places which have never been built, which have grown out of the soil, of undecipherable antiquity--perhaps, one feels, only a hundred, perhaps a thousand years old--yet alwaysinhabitable in all the ages, with the same names lingering about, thesame surroundings, the same mild rural occupations, simple plenty andbare want mingling together with as little difference of level as existsin the sweeping lines of the landscape round. 

The life was calm in so humble a corner which offered nothing tothe invader or marauder of the time, but yet was so much within theuniversal conditions of war that the next-door neighbour, so to speak, the adjacent village of Maxey, held for the Burgundian and Englishalliance, while little Domremy was for the King. And once at least whenJeanne was a girl at home, the family were startled in their quiet bythe swoop of an armed party of Burgundians, and had to gather upbabies and what portable property they might have, and flee across thefrontier, where the good Lorrainers received and sheltered them, tillthey could go back to their village, sacked and pillaged and devastatedin the meantime by the passing storm. Thus even in their humility andinoffensiveness the Domremy villagers knew what war and its miserieswere, and the recollection would no doubt be vivid among the children, of that half terrible, half exhilarating adventure, the fright andexcitement of personal participation in the troubles, of which, nightand day, from one quarter or another, they must have heard. 

Domremy had originally belonged(1) to the Abbey of St. Remy atRheims--the ancient church of which, in its great antiquity, is still aninterest and a wonder even in comparison with the amazing splendour ofthe cathedral of that place, so rich and ornate, which draws the eyes ofthe visitor to itself, and its greater associations. It is possible thatthis ancient connection with Rheims may have brought the great ceremonyfor which it is ever memorable, the consecration of the kings of France, more distinctly before the musing vision of the village girl; but Idoubt whether such chance associations are ever much to be relied upon. The village was on the high-road to Germany; it must have been thereforein the way of news, and of many rumours of what was going on in thecentres of national life, more than many towns of importance. Feudalbands, a rustic Seigneur with his little troop, going out for theirforty days' service, or returning home after it, must have passed alongthe banks of the lazy Meuse many days during the fighting season, andindeed throughout the year, for garrison duty would be as necessary inwinter as in summer; or a wandering pair of friars who had seen strangesights must have passed with their wallets from the neighbouringconvents, collecting the day's provision, and leaving news andgossip behind, such as flowed to these monastic hostelries from allquarters--tales of battles, and anecdotes of the Court, and dreadfulstories of English atrocities, to stir the village and rouse evergenerous sentiment and stirring of national indignation. They are saidby Michelet to have been no man's vassals, these outlying hamlets ofChampagne; the men were not called upon to follow their lord's bannerat a day's notice, as were the sons of other villages. There is noappearance even of a lord at all upon this piece of Church land, whichwas, we are told, directly held under the King, and would only thereforebe touched by a general levy _en masse_--not even perhaps by that, so far off were they, and so near the frontier, where a reluctantman-at-arms could without difficulty make his escape, as the unwillingconscript sometimes does now. 

There would seem to have been no one of more importance in Domremy thanJacques d'Arc himself and his wife, respectable peasants, with a littlemoney, a considerable rural property in flocks and herds and pastures, and a good reputation among their kind. He had three sons working withtheir father in the peaceful routine of the fields; and two daughters, of whom some authorities indicate Jeanne as the younger, and some as theelder. The cottage interior, however, appears more clearly to us thanthe outward aspect of the family life. The daughters were not, like thechildren of poorer peasants, brought up to the rude outdoor laboursof the little farm. Painters have represented Jeanne as keeping herfather's sheep, and even the early witnesses say the same; but it iscontradicted by herself, who ought to know best--(except in taking herturn to herd them into a place of safety on an alarm). If she followedthe flocks to the fields, it must have been, she says, in her childhood, and she has no recollection of it. Hers was a more sheltered and saferlot. The girls were brought up by their mother indoors in all thelabours of housewifery, but also in the delicate art of needlework, so much more exquisite in those days than now. Perhaps Isabeau, themistress of the house, was of convent training, perhaps some ancientprivilege in respect to the manufacture of ornaments for the altar, andchurch vestments, was still retained by the tenants of what had beenChurch lands. At all events this, and other kindred works of the needle, seems to have been the chief occupation to which Jeanne was brought up. 

The education of this humble house seems to have come entirely from themother. It was natural that the children should not know A from B, asJeanne afterward said; but no one did, probably, in the village nor evenon much higher levels than that occupied by the family of Jacques d'Arc. But the children at their mother's knee learned the Credo, theylearned the simple universal prayers which are common to the wisest andsimplest, which no great savant or poet could improve, and no child failto understand: "Our Father, which art in Heaven, " and that "Hail, Mary, full of grace, " which the world in that day put next. These were thealphabet of life to the little Champagnards in their rough woollenfrocks and clattering sabots; and when the house had been set inorder, --a house not without comfort, with its big wooden presses full oflinen, and the _pot au feu_ hung over the cheerful fire, --came thereal work, perhaps embroideries for the Church, perhaps only good stoutshirts made of flax spun by their own hands for the father and the boys, and the fine distinctive coif of the village for the women. "Asked ifshe had learned any art or trade, said: Yes, that her mother had taughther to sew and spin, and so well, that she did not think any woman inRouen could teach her anything. " When the lady in the ballad makes herconditions with the peasant woman who is to bring up her boy, her "gaygoss hawk, " and have him trained in the use of sword and lance, sheundertakes to teach the "turtle-doo, " the woman child substituted forhim, "to lay gold with her hand. " No doubt Isabeau's child learnedthis difficult and dainty art, and how to do the beautiful and delicateembroidery which fills the treasuries of the old churches. 

And while they sat by the table in the window, with their shining silksand gold thread, the mother made the quiet hours go by with tale andlegend--of the saints first of all--and stories from Scripture, quaintlyinterpreted into the costume and manners of their own time, as onemay still hear them in the primitive corners of Italy: mingled withincidents of the war, of the wounded man tended in the village, and thevictors all flushed with triumph, and the defeated with trailing armsand bowed heads, riding for their lives: perhaps little epics andtragedies of the young knight riding by to do his devoir with hishandful of followers all spruce and gay, and the battered and diminishedremnant that would come back. And then the Black Burgundians, thehorrible English ogres, whose names would make the children shudder! No_God-den_(2) had got so far as Domremy; there was no personal knowledgeto soften the picture of the invader. He was unspeakable as the Turk tothe imagination of the French peasant, diabolical as every invader is. 

This was the earliest training of the little maid before whom so strangeand so great a fortune lay. _Autre personne que sadite mère ne luiapprint_--any lore whatsoever; and she so little--yet everything thatwas wanted--her prayers, her belief, the happiness of serving God, andalso man; for when any one was sick in the village, either a littlechild with the measles, or a wounded soldier from the wars, Isabeau'smodest child--no doubt the mother too--was always ready to help. Itmust have been a family _de bien_, in the simple phrase of the country, helpful, serviceable, with charity and aid for all. An honest labourer, who came to speak for Jeanne at the second trial, held long after herdeath, gave his incontestable evidence to this. "I was then a child, " hesaid, "and it was she who nursed me in my illness. " They were all moreor less devout in those days, when faith was without question, and theroutine of church ceremonial was followed as a matter of course; but fewso much as Jeanne, whose chief pleasure it was to say her prayers in thelittle dark church, where perhaps in the morning sunshine, as she madeher early devotions, there would blaze out upon her from a window, aHoly Michael in shining armour, transfixing the dragon with his spear, or a St. Margaret dominating the same emblem of evil with her cross inher hand. So, at least, the historians conjecture, anxious to find outsome reason for her visions; and there is nothing in the suggestionwhich is unpleasing. The little country church was in the gift of St. Remy, and some benefactor of the rural curé might well have givena painted window to make glad the hearts of the simple people. St. Margaret was no warrior-saint, but she overcame the dragon with hercross, and was thus a kind of sister spirit to the great archangel. 

Sitting much of her time at or outside the cottage door with herneedlework, in itself an occupation so apt to encourage musing anddreams, the bells were one of Jeanne's great pleasures. We know atraveller, of the calmest English temperament and sobriety of Protestantfancy, to whom the midday Angelus always brings, he says, a touchingreminder--which he never neglects wherever he may be--to uncover thehead and lift up the heart; how much more the devout peasant girl softlystartled in the midst of her dreaming by that call to prayer. She was sofond of those bells that she bribed the careless bell-ringer with simplepresents to be more attentive to his duty. From the garden where she satwith her work, the cloudy foliage of the _bois de chêne_, the oakwood, where were legends of fairies and a magic well, to which herimagination, better inspired, seems to have given no great heed, filledup the prospect on one side. At a later period, her accusers attemptedto make out that she had been a devotee of these nameless woodlandspirits, but in vain. No doubt she was one of the procession on the holyday once a year, when the curé of the parish went out through the woodto the Fairies' Well to say his mass, and exorcise what evil enchantmentmight be there. But Jeanne's imagination was not of the kind to requiresuch stimulus. The saints were enough for her; and indeed they suppliedto a great extent the fairy tales of the age, though it was not of loveand fame and living happy ever after, but of sacrifice and suffering andvalorous martyrdom that their glory was made up. 

We hear of the woods, the fields, the cottages, the little church andits bells, the garden where she sat and sewed, the mother's stories, the morning mass, in this quiet preface of the little maiden's life; butnothing of the highroad with its wayfarers, the convoys of provisionsfor the war, the fighting men that were coming and going. Yet these, too, must have filled a large part in the village life, and itis evident that a strong impression of the pity of it all, of thedistraction of the country and all the cruelties and miseries of whichshe could not but hear, must have early begun to work in Jeanne's being, and that while she kept silence the fire burned in her heart. The loveof God, and that love of country which has nothing to say to politicalpatriotism but translates itself in an ardent longing and desire to do"some excelling thing" for the benefit and glory of that country, andto heal its wounds--were the two principles of her life. We have not theslightest indication how much or how little of this latter sentiment wasshared by the simple community about her; unless from the fact thatthe Domremy children fought with those of Maxey, their disaffectedneighbours, to the occasional effusion of blood. We do not know evenof any volunteer from the village, or enthusiasm for the King. (3) Thedistrict was voiceless, the little clusters of cottages fully occupiedin getting their own bread, and probably like most other villagesocieties, disposed to treat any military impulse among their sons asmere vagabondism and love of adventure and idleness. 

Nothing, so far as anyone knows, came near the most unlikely volunteerof all, to lead her thoughts to that art of war of which she knewnothing, and of which her little experience could only have shown herthe horrors and miseries, the sufferings of wounded fugitives and theruin of sacked houses. Of all people in the world, the little daughterof a peasant was the last who could have been expected to respond to theappeal of the wretched country. She had three brothers who might haveserved the King, and there was no doubt many a stout clodhopperabout, of that kind which in every country is the fittest material forfighting, and "food for powder. " But to none of these did the call come. Every detail goes to increase the profound impression of peacefulnesswhich fills the atmosphere--the slow river floating by, the roofsclustered together, the church bells tinkling their continual summons, the girl with her work at the cottage door in the shadow of the appletrees. To pack the little knapsack of a brother or a lover, and toconvoy him weeping a little way on his road to the army, coming back tothe silent church to pray there, with the soft natural tears which theuses of common life must soon dry--that is all that imagination couldhave demanded of Jeanne. She was even too young for any interpositionof the lover, too undeveloped, the French historians tell us with theirastonishing frankness, to the end of her short life, to have been movedby any such thought. She might have poured forth a song, a prayer, arude but sweet lament for her country, out of the still bosom of thatrustic existence. Such things have been, the trouble of the age forcingan utterance from the very depths of its inarticulate life. But it wasnot for this that Jeanne d'Arc was born. 

 (1) Mr. Andrew Lang informs me that the real proprietor was a certain "Dame d'Orgévillier. " "On Jeanne's side of the burn, " he adds, with a picturesque touch of realism, "the people were probably _free_ as attached to the Royal Châtellenie of Vancouleurs, as described below. "

 (2) This was probably not the God-dam of later French, a reflection of the supposed prevalent English oath, but most likely merely the God-den or good-day, the common salutation. 

 (3) Domremy was split, Mr. Lang says, by the burn, and Jeanne's side were probably King's men. We have it on her own word that there was but one Burgundian in the village, but that might mean on her side. 

CHAPTER II -- DOMREMY AND VAUCOULEURS. 1424-1429. 

In the year 1424, the year in which, after the battle of Agincourt, France was delivered over to Henry V. , an extraordinary event occurredin the life of this little French peasant. We have not the same horrorof that treaty, naturally, as have the French. Henry V. Is a favouriteof our history, probably not so much for his own merit as because ofthat master-magician, Shakespeare, who of his supreme good pleasure, inthe exercise of that voluntary preference, which even God himself seemsto show to some men, has made of that monarch one of the best beloved ofour hearts. Dear to us as he is, in Eastcheap as at Agincourt, andmore in the former than the latter, even our sense of the disgracefulcharacter of that bargain, _le traité infâme_ of Troyes, by which QueenIsabeau betrayed her son, and gave her daughter and her country to theinvader, is softened a little by our high estimation of the hero. Butthis is simple national prejudice; regarded from the French side, oreven by the impartial judgment of general humanity, it was an infamoustreaty, and one which might well make the blood boil in French veins. 

We look at it at present, however, through the atmosphere of thenineteenth century, when France is all French, and when the royal houseof England has no longer any French connection. If George III. , muchmore George II. , on the basis of his kingdom of Hanover, had attemptedto make himself master of a large portion of Germany, the situationwould have been more like that of Henry V. In France than anything wecan think of now. It is true the kings of England were no longer dukesof Normandy--but they had been so within the memory of man: and thatnoble duchy was a hereditary appanage of the family of the Conqueror;while to other portions of France they had the link of temporarypossession and inheritance through French wives and mothers; added towhich is the fact that Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, thirsting to avengehis father's blood upon the Dauphin, would have been probably a moredangerous usurper than Henry, and that the actual sovereign, theunfortunate, mad Charles VI. , was in no condition to maintain his ownrights. 

There is little evidence, however, that this treaty, or anything sodistinct in detail, had made much impression on the outlying borders ofFrance. What was known there, was only that the English were victorious, that the rightful King of France was still uncrowned and unacknowledged, and that the country was oppressed and humiliated under the foot of theinvader. The fact that the new King was not yet the Lord's anointed, andhad never received the seal of God, as it were, to his commission, wasa fact which struck the imagination of the village as of much moreimportance than many greater things--being at once more visible andmatter-of-fact, and of more mystical and spiritual efficacy than anyother circumstance in the dreadful tale. 

Jeanne was in the garden as usual, seated, as we should say in Scotland, at "her seam, " not quite thirteen, a child in all the innocence ofinfancy, yet full of dreams, confused no doubt and vague, with thoseimpulses and wonderings--impatient of trouble, yearning to givehelp--which tremble on the chaos of a young soul like the firstlightening of dawn upon the earth. It was summer, and afternoon, thetime of dreams. It would be easy in the employment of legitimate fancyto heighten the picturesqueness of that quiet scene--the little girlwith her favourite bells, the birds picking up the crumbs of brownbread at her feet. She was thinking of nothing, most likely, in a vaguesuspense of musing, the wonder of youth, the awakening of thought, asyet come to little definite in her child's heart--looking up from herwork to note some passing change of the sky, a something in the airwhich was new to her. All at once between her and the church there shonea light on the right hand, unlike anything she had ever seen before; andout of it came a voice equally unknown and wonderful. What did the voicesay? Only the simplest words, words fit for a child, no maxim or mandateabove her faculties--"_Jeanne, sois bonne et sage enfant; va souventà l'église. _" Jeanne, be good! What more could an archangel, whatless could the peasant mother within doors, say? The little girl wasfrightened, but soon composed herself. The voice could be nothingbut sacred and blessed which spoke thus. It would not appear that shementioned it to anyone. It is such a secret as a child, in that waveringbetween the real and unreal, the world not realised of childhood, wouldkeep, in mingled shyness and awe, uncertain, rapt in the atmosphere ofvision, within her own heart. 

It is curious how often this wonderful scene has been repeated inFrance, never connected with so high a mission, but yet embracing thesame circumstances, the same situation, the same semi-angelic nature ofthe woman-child. The little Bernadette of Lourdes is almost of our ownday; she, too is one who puts the scorner to silence. What her visionsand her voices were, who can say? The last historian of them is nota man credulous of good or moved towards the ideal; yet he is silent, except in a wondering impression of the sacred and the true, before thelittle Bearnaise in her sabots; and, notwithstanding the many sordidresults that have followed and all that sad machinery of expectedmiracle through which even, repulsive as it must always be, a somethingbreaks forth from time to time which no man can define and accountfor except in ways more incredible than miracle--so is the rest of theworld. Why has this logical, sceptical, doubting country, so able toquench with an epigram, or blow away with a breath of ridicule thefinest vision--become the special sphere and birthplace of thesespotless infant-saints? This is one of the wonders which nobody attemptsto account for. Yet Bernadette is as Jeanne, though there are more thanfour hundred years between. 

After what intervals the vision returned we are not told, nor in whatcircumstances. It seems to have come chiefly out-of-doors, in thesilence and freedom of the fields or garden. Presently the heavenlyradiance shaped itself into some semblance of forms and figures, oneof which, clearer than the others, was like a man, but with wings anda crown on his head and the air "_d'un vrai prud' homme_"; a nobleapparition before whom at first the little maid trembled, but whosemajestic, honest regard soon gave her confidence. He bade her once moreto be good, and that God would help her; then he told her the sadstory of her own suffering country, _la pitié qui estoit au royaume deFrance_. Was it the pity of heaven that the archangel reported to thelittle trembling girl, or only that which woke with the word in her ownchildish soul? He has chosen the small things of this world to confoundthe great. Jeanne's young heart was full of pity already, and ofyearning over the helpless mother-country which had no champion to standfor her. "She had great doubts at first whether it was St. Michael, butafterwards when he had instructed her and shown her many things, shebelieved firmly that it was he. "

It was this warrior-angel who opened the matter to her, and disclosedher mission. "Jeanne, " he said, "you must go to the help of the King ofFrance; and it is you who shall give him back his kingdom. " Like a stillgreater Maid, trembling, casting in her mind what this might mean, shereplied, confused, as if that simple detail were all: "Messire, I amonly a poor girl; I cannot ride or lead armed men. " The vision tookno notice of this plea. He became minute in his directions, indicatingexactly what she was to do. "Go to Messire de Baudricourt, captain ofVaucouleurs, and he will take you to the King. St. Catherine andSt. Margaret will come and help you. " Jeanne was overwhelmed by thisexactness, by the sensation of receiving direct orders. She cried, weeping and helpless, terrified to the bottom of her soul--What was shethat she should do this? a little girl, able to guide nothing but herneedle or her distaff, to lend her simple aid in nursing a sick child. But behind all her fright and hesitation, her heart was filled with theemotion thus suggested to her--the immeasurable _pitié que estoit auroyaume de France_. Her heart became heavy with this burden. By degreesit came about that she could think of nothing else; and her littlelife was confused by expectations and recollections of the celestialvisitant, who might arrive upon her at any moment, in the midst perhapsof some innocent play, or when she sat sewing in the garden before herfather's humble door. 

After a while the _vrai prud' homme_ came seldom; other figures morelike herself, soft forms of women, white and shining, with goldencirclets and ornaments, appeared to her in the great halo of the light;they bowed their heads, naming themselves, as to a sister spirit, Catherine, and the other Margaret. Their voices were sweet and softwith a sound that made you weep. They were both martyrs, encouraging andstrengthening the little martyr that was to be. "A lady is there in theheavens who loves thee": Virgil could not say more to rouse the flaggingstrength of Dante. When these gentle figures disappeared, the littlemaid wept in an anguish of tenderness, longing if only they would takeher with them. It is curious that though she describes in this vaguerapture the appearance of her visitors, it is always as "_mes voix_"that she names them--the sight must always have been more imperfect thanthe message. Their outlines and their lovely faces might shine uncertainin the excess of light; but the words were always plain. The pity forFrance that was in their hearts spread itself into the silent ruralatmosphere, touching every sensitive chord in the nature of littleJeanne. It was as if her mother lay dying there before her eyes. 

Curious to think how little anyone could have suspected such meetings asthese, in the cottage hard by, where the weary ploughmen from the fieldswould come clamping in for their meal, and Dame Isabeau would callto the child, even sharply perhaps now and then, to leave thatall-absorbing needlework and come in and help, as Martha called Maryfourteen hundred years before; and where the priest, mumbling his massof a cold morning in the little church, would smile indulgent on thefaithful little worshipper when it was done, sure of seeing Jeanne therewhoever might be absent. She was a shy girl, blushing and drooping herhead when a stranger spoke to her, red and shame-faced when they laughedat her in the village as a _dévote_ before her time; but with nothingelse to blush about in all her simple record. 

Neither to her parents, nor to the curé when she made her confession, does she seem to have communicated these strange experiences, thoughthey had lasted for some time before she felt impelled to act uponthem, and could keep silence no longer. She was but thirteen when therevelations began and she was seventeen when at last she set forth tofulfil her mission. She had no guidance from her voices, she herselfsays, as to whether she should tell or not tell what had beencommunicated to her; and no doubt was kept back by her shyness, and bythe dreamy confusion of childhood between the real and unreal. Onewould have thought that a life in which these visions were of constantrecurrence would have been rapt altogether out of wholesome use andwont, and all practical service. But this does not seem for a moment tohave been the case. Jeanne was no hysterical girl, living with her headin a mist, abstracted from the world. She had all the enthusiasms evenof youthful friendship, other girls surrounding her with the intimacy ofthe village, paying her visits, staying all night, sharing her room andher bed. She was ready to be sent for by any poor woman that needed helpor nursing, she was always industrious at her needle; one would loveto know if perhaps in the _Trésor_ at Rheims there was some stole ormaniple with flowers on it, wrought by her hands. But the _Trésor_ atRheims is nowadays rather vulgar if truth must be told, and the bottlesand vases for the consecration of Charles X. , that _pauvre sire_, aremore thought of than relics of an earlier age. 

At length, however, one does not know how, the secret of her double lifecame out. No doubt long brooding over these voices, long intercoursewith such celestial visitors, and the mission continually pressed uponher--meaningless to the child at first, a thing only to shed terrifiedtears over and wonder at--ripened her intelligence so that she came atlast to perceive that it was practicable, a thing to be done, acharge to be obeyed. She had this before her, as a girl in ordinarycircumstances has the new developments of life to think of, and howto be a wife and mother. And the news brought by every passer-by wouldprove doubly interesting, doubly important to Jeanne, in her dailygrowing comprehension of what she was called upon to do. As she felt thecurrent more and more catching her feet, sweeping her on, overcoming allresistance in her own mind, she must have been more and more anxious toknow what was going on in the distracted world, more and more touched bythat great pity which had awakened her soul. And all these reports wereof a nature to increase that pity till it became overwhelming. Thetales she would hear of the English must have been tales of crueltyand horror; not so many years ago what tales did not we hear of Germanferocity in the French villages, perhaps not true at all, yet makingtheir impression always; and it was more probable in that age that everysuch story should be true. Then the compassion which no one can helpfeeling for a young man deprived of his rights, his inheritance takenfrom him, his very life in danger, threatened by the stranger andusurper, was deepened in every particular by the fact that it was theKing, the very impersonation of France, appointed by God as the head ofthe country, who was in danger. Everything that Jeanne heard would helpto swell the stream. 

Thus she must have come step by step--this extraordinary, impossiblesuggestion once sown in her dreaming soul--to perceive a kind ofmiraculous reasonableness in it, to see its necessity, and howeverything pointed towards such a deliverance. It would have seemednatural to believe that the prophecies of the countryside which promiseda virgin from an oak grove, a maiden from Lorraine, to deliver France, might have affected her mind, did we not have it from her own voicethat she had never heard that prophecy(1); but the word of the blessedMichael, so often repeated, was more than an old wife's tale; and thechild's alarm would seem to have died away as she came to her fullgrowth. And Jeanne was no ethereal spirit lost in visions, but arobust and capable peasant girl, fearing little, and full of sense anddetermination, as well as of an inspiration so far above the level ofthe crowd. We hear with wonder afterwards that she had the making of agreat general in her untutored female soul, --which is perhaps the mostwonderful thing in her career, --and saw with the eye of an experiencedand able soldier, as even Dunois did not always see it, the fit orderof an attack, the best arrangement of the forces at her command. This Ihonestly avow is to me the most incredible point in the story. I am notdisturbed by the apparition of the saints; there is in them an ineffableappropriateness and fitness against which the imagination, at least, has not a word to say. The wonder is not, to the natural mind, that suchinterpositions of heaven come, but that they come so seldom. But thatJacques d'Arc's daughter, the little girl over her sewing, whose onlyfault was that she went to church too often, should have the genius of asoldier, is too bewildering for words to say. A poet, yes, an inspiringinfluence leading on to miraculous victory; but a general, skilfulwith the rude artillery of the time, divining the better way instrategy, --this is a wonder beyond the reach of our faculties; yetaccording to Alençon, Dunois, and other military authorities, it wastrue. 

We have little means of finding out how it was that Jeanne's longmusings came at last to a point at which they could be hidden no longer, nor what it was which induced her at last to select the confidant shedid. No doubt she must have been considering and weighing the matter fora long time before she fixed upon the man who was her relation, yetdid not belong to Domremy, and was safer than a townsman for theextraordinary revelations she had to make. One of her neighbours, hergossip, Gerard of Epinal, to whose child she was godmother, had perhapsat one moment seemed to her a likely helper. But he belonged to theopposite party. "If you were not a Burgundian, " she said to him once, "there is something I might tell you. " The honest fellow took this tomean that she had some thought of marriage, the most likely and naturalsupposition. It was at this moment, when her heart was burning withher great secret, the voices urging her on day by day, and her power ofself-constraint almost at an end, that Providence sent Durand Laxart, her uncle by marriage, to Domremy on some family visit. She would seemto have taken advantage of the opportunity with eagerness, asking himprivately to take her home with him, and to explain to her father andmother that he wanted her to take care of his wife. No doubt the girl, devoured with so many thoughts, would have the air of requiring "achange" as we say, and that the mother would be very ready to accept forher an invitation which might bring back the brightness to her child. Laxart was a peasant like the rest, a _prud' homme_ well thought ofamong his people. He lived in Burey le Petit, near to Vaucouleurs, thechief place of the district, and Jeanne already knew that it was to thecaptain of Vaucouleurs that she was to address herself. Thus she securedher object in the simplest and most natural way. 

Yet the reader cannot but hold his breath at the thought of what thatamazing revelation must have been to the homely, rustic soul, hercompanion, communicated as they went along the common road in the commondaylight. "She said to the witness that she must go to France to theDauphin, to make him to be crowned King. " It must have been as if athunderbolt had fallen at his feet when the girl whom he had known inevery development of her little life, thus suddenly disclosed to him hersecret purpose and determination. All her simple excellence the goodman knew, and that she was no fantastic chatterer, but truly _une bonnedouce fille_, bold in nothing but kindness, with nothing to blush forbut the fault of going too often to church. "Did you never hear thatFrance should be made desolate by a woman and restored by a maid?" shesaid; and this would seem to have been an unanswerable argument. He had, henceforth, nothing to do but to promote her purpose as best he could inevery way. 

It would not seem at all unlikely to this good man that the ArchangelMichael, if Jeanne's revelation to him went so far, should have namedRobert de Baudricourt, the chief of the district, captain of the townand its forces, the principal personage in all the neighbourhood, asthe person to whom Jeanne's purpose was to be revealed, but rather aguarantee of St. Michael himself, familiar with good society; and theSeigneur must have been more or less in good intelligence with hispeople, not too alarming to be referred to, even on so insignificanta subject as the vagaries of a country girl--though these by thistime must have begun to seem something more than vagaries to thehalf-convinced peasant. And it was no doubt a great relief to his mindthus to put the decision of the question into the hands of a man betterinformed than himself. Laxart proceeded to Vaucouleurs upon his mission, shyly yet with confidence. He would seem to have had a preliminaryinterview with Baudricourt before introducing Jeanne. The stammeringcountryman, the bluff, rustic noble and soldier, cheerfullycontemptuous, receiving, with a loud laugh into all the echoes, theextraordinary demand that he should send a little girl from Domremyto the King, to deliver France, come before us like a picture in thecountryman's simple words. Robert de Baudricourt would scarcely hear thestory out. "Box her ears, " he said, "and send her home to her mother. "The little fool! What did she know of the English, those brutal, downright fighters, against whom no _élan_ was sufficient, who stoodtheir ground and set up vulgar posts around their lines, insteadof trusting to the rush of sudden valour, and the tactics of thetournament! She deliver France! On a much smaller argument and to putdown a less ambition, the half serious, half amused adviser has biddena young fanatic's ears to be boxed on many an unimportant occasion, and has often been justified in so doing. There would be a half hour ofgaiety after poor Laxart, crestfallen, had got his dismissal. Thegood man must have turned back to Jeanne, where she waited for him incourtyard or antechamber, with a heavy heart. No boxing of ears waspossible to him. The mere thought of it was blasphemy. This was onAscension Day the 13 May, 1428. 

Jeanne, however, was not discouraged by M. De Baudricourt's joke, andher interview with him changed his views completely. She appears indeedfrom the moment of setting out from her father's house to have taken anew attitude. These great personages of the country before whom all thepeasants trembled, were nothing to this village maid, except, perhaps, instruments in the hand of God to speed her on her way if they could seetheir privileges--if not, to be swept out of it like straws by the wind. It had no doubt been hard for her to leave her father's house; but afterthat disruption what did anything matter? And she had gone through fiveyears of gradual training of which no one knew. The tears and terror, the plea, "I am a poor girl; I cannot even ride, " of her first childlikealarm had given place to a profound acquaintance with the voices andtheir meaning. They were now her familiar friends guiding her at everystep; and what was the commonplace burly Seigneur, with his roar oflaughter, to Jeanne? She went to her audience with none of the alarmof the peasant. A certain young man of Baudricourt's suite, Bertrand dePoulengy, another young D'Artagnan seeking his fortune, was presentin the hall and witnessed the scene. The joke would seem to have beenexhausted by the time Jeanne appeared, or her perfect gravity andsimplicity, and beautiful manners--so unlike her rustic dress andvillage coif--imposed upon the Seigneur and his little court. This ishow the story is told, twenty-five years after, by the witness, then anelderly knight, recalling the story of his youth. 

"She said that she came to Robert on the part of her Lord, that heshould send to the Dauphin, and tell him to hold out, and have no fear, for the Lord would send him succour before the middle of Lent. She alsosaid that France did not belong to the Dauphin but to her Lord; but herLord willed that the Dauphin should be its King, and hold it in command, and that in spite of his enemies she herself would conduct him to beconsecrated. Robert then asked her who was this Lord? She answered, 'TheKing of Heaven. ' This being done (the witness adds) she returned to herfather's house with her uncle, Durand Laxart of Burey le Petit. "

This brief and sudden preface to her career passed over and had noimmediate effect; indeed but for Bertrand we should have been unableto separate it from the confused narrative to which all these witnessesbrought what recollection they had, often without sequence or order, Durand himself taking no notice of any interval between this firstvisit to Vaucouleurs and the final one. (2) The episode of Ascension Dayappears like the formal _sommation_ of French law, made as a matter ofform before the appellant takes action on his own responsibility; butBaudricourt had probably more to do with it than appears to be at allcertain from the after evidence. One of the persons present, at allevents, young Poulengy above mentioned, bore it in mind and pondered itin his heart. 

Meantime, Jeanne returned home--the strangest home-going, --for by thistime her mission and her aspirations could no longer be hid, and rumourmust have carried the news almost as quickly as any modern telegraph, to startle all the echoes of the village, heretofore unaware of anydifference between Jeanne and her companions save the greater goodnessto which everybody bears testimony. No doubt, it must have reachedJacques d'Arc's cottage even before she came back with the kind Durand, a changed creature, already the consecrated Maid of France, La Pucelle, apart from all others. The French peasant is a hard man, more fierce inhis terror of the unconventional, of having his domestic affairs exposedto the public eye, or his family disgraced by an exhibition of anythingunusual either in act or feeling, than almost any other class of beings. And it is evident that he took his daughter's intention according to thecoarsest interpretation, as a wild desire for adventure and intentionof joining herself to the roving troopers, the soldiers always hated anddreaded in rural life. He suddenly appears in the narrative in a feverof apprehension, with no imaginative alarm or anxiety about his girl, but the fiercest suspicion of her, and dread of disgrace to ensue. We donot know what passed when she returned, further than that her father hada dream, no doubt after the first astounding explanation of the purposethat had so long been ripening in her mind. He dreamed that he saw hersurrounded by armed men, in the midst of the troopers, the most evidentand natural interpretation of her purpose, for who could divine thatshe meant to be their leader and general, on a level not with the commonmen-at-arms, but of princes and nobles? In the morning he told his dreamto his wife and also to his sons. "If I could think that the thing wouldhappen that I dreamed, I would wish that she should be drowned; andif you would not do it, I should do it with my own hands. " The readerremembers with a shudder the Meuse flowing at the foot of the garden, while the fierce peasant, mad with fear lest shame should be coming tohis family, clenched his strong fist and made this outcry of dismay. 

No doubt his wife smoothed the matter over as well as she could, and, whatever alarms were in her own mind, hastily thought of a feminineexpedient to mend matters, and persuaded the angry father that tosubstitute other dreams for these would be an easier way. Isabeau mostprobably knew the village lad who would fain have had her child, so gooda housewife, so industrious a workwoman, and always so friendly and sohelpful, for his wife. At all events there was such a one, too willingto exert himself, not discouraged by any refusal, who could be eggedup to the very strong point of appearing before the bishop at Toul andswearing that Jeanne had been promised to him from her childhood. Sotimid a girl, they all thought, so devout a Catholic, would simply obeythe bishop's decision and would not be bold enough even to remonstrate, though it is curious that with the spectacle of her grave determinationbefore them, and sorrowful sense of that necessity of her missionwhich had steeled her to dispense with their consent, they should haveexpected such an expedient to arrest her steps. The affair, we mustsuppose, had gone through all the more usual stages of entreaty on thelover's part, and persuasion on that of the parents, before such anattempt was finally made. But the shy Jeanne had by this time attainedthat courage of desperation which is not inconsistent with the mostgentle nature; and without saying anything to anyone, she too went toToul, appeared before the bishop, and easily freed herself from thepretended engagement, though whether with any reference to her verydifferent destination we are not told. (3)

These proceedings, however, and the father's dreams and theremonstrances of the mother, must have made troubled days in thecottage, and scenes of wrath and contradiction, hard to bear. The winterpassed distracted by these contentions, and it is difficult to imaginehow Jeanne could have borne this had it not been that the period of heroutset had already been indicated, and that it was only in the middle ofLent that her succour was to reach the King. The village, no doubt, wasalmost as much distracted as her father's house to hear of these strangediscussions and of the incredible purpose of the _bonne douce fille_, whose qualities everybody knew and about whom there was nothingeccentric, nothing unnatural, but only simple goodness, to distinguishher above her neighbours. In the meantime her voices called hercontinually to her work. They set her free from the ordinary yoke ofobedience, always so strong in the mind of a French girl. The dreadfulstep of abandoning her home, not to be thought of under any othercircumstances, was more and more urgently pressed upon her. Could itindeed be saints and angels who ordained a step which was outside of allthe habits and first duties of nature? But we have no reason to believethat this nineteenth-century doubt of her visitors, and of whether theirmandates were right, entered into the mind of a girl who was of her ownperiod and not of ours. She went on steadfastly, certain of her missionnow, and inaccessible either to remonstrance or appeal. 

It was towards the beginning of Lent, as Poulengy tells us, that thedecision was made, and she left home finally, to go "to France" as isalways said. But it seems to have been in January that she set out oncemore for Vaucouleurs, accompanied by her uncle, who took her to thehouse of some humble folk they knew, a carter and his wife, where theylodged. Jeanne wore her peasant dress of heavy red homespun, her rudeheavy shoes, her village coif. She never made any pretence of ladyhoodor superiority to her class, but was always equal to the finest societyin which she found herself, by dint of that simple good faith, sense, and seriousness, without excitement or exaggeration, and radiant purityand straightforwardness which were apparent to all seeing eyes. Bythis time all the little world about knew something of her purpose andfollowed her every step with wonder and quickly rising curiosity: and nodoubt the whole town was astir, women gazing at their doors, all on herside from the first moment, the men half interested, half insolent, asshe went once more to the chateau to make her personal appeal. Simple asshe was, the _bonne douce fille_ was not intimidated by the guard at thegates, the lounging soldiers, the no doubt impudent glances flung ather by these rude companions. She was inaccessible to alarms of thatkind--which, perhaps, is one of the greatest safeguards against themeven in more ordinary cases. We find little record of her secondinterview with Baudricourt. The _Journal du Siège d'Orleans_ and the_Chronique de la Pucelle_ both mention it as if it had been one ofseveral, which may well have been the case, as she was for three weeksin Vaucouleurs. It is almost impossible to arrange the incidents of thisinterval between her arrival there and her final departure for Chinon onthe 23d February, during which time she made a pilgrimage to a shrineof St. Nicolas and also a visit to the Duke of Lorraine. It is clear, however, that she must have repeated her demand with such stress andurgency that the Captain of Vaucouleurs was a much perplexed man. It wasa very natural idea then, and in accordance with every sentiment ofthe time that he should suspect this wonderful girl, who would not bedaunted, of being a witch and capable of bringing an evil fate on allwho crossed her. All thought of boxing her ears must ere this havedeparted from his mind. He hastened to consult the curé, which wasthe most reasonable thing to do. The curé was as much puzzled as theCaptain. The Church, it must be said, if always ready to take advantageafterwards of such revelations, has always been timid, even scepticalabout them at first. The wisdom of the rulers, secular and ecclesiastic, suggested only one thing to do, which was to exorcise, and perhaps tooverawe and frighten, the young visionary. They paid a joint and solemnvisit to the carter's house, where no doubt their entrance together wasspied by many eager eyes; and there the priest solemnly taking out hisstole invested himself in his priestly robes and exorcised the evilspirits, bidding them come out of the girl if they were her inspiration. There seems a certain absurdity in this sudden assault upon the evilone, taking him as it were by surprise: but it was not ridiculous toany of the performers, though Jeanne no doubt looked on with serene andsmiling eyes. She remarked afterwards to her hostess, that the curé haddone wrong, as he had already heard her in confession. 

Outside, the populace were in no uncertainty at all as to her mission. A little mob hung about the door to see her come and go, chiefly tochurch, with her good hostess in attendance, as was right and seemly, and a crowd streaming after them who perhaps of their own accord mighthave neglected mass, but who would not, if they could help it, lose alook at the new wonder. One day a young gentleman of the neighbourhoodwas passing by, and amused by the commotion, came through the crowd tohave a word with the peasant lass. "What are you doing here, _ma mie_?"the young man said. "Is the King to be driven out of the kingdom, andare we all to be made English?" There is a tone of banter in the speech, but he had already heard of the Maid from his friend, Bertrand, and hadbeen affected by the other's enthusiasm. "Robert de Baudricourt willhave none of me or my words, " she replied, "nevertheless before Mid-LentI must be with the King, if I should wear my feet up to my knees;for nobody in the world, be it king, duke, or the King of Scotland'sdaughter, can save the kingdom of France except me alone: though I wouldrather spin beside my poor mother, and this is not my work: but I mustgo and do it, because my Lord so wills it. " "And who is your Seigneur?"he asked. "God, " said the girl. The young man was moved, he too, by thatwind which bloweth where it listeth. He stretched out his hands throughthe gaping crowd and took hers, holding them between his own, to giveher his pledge: and so swore by his faith, her hands in his hands, thathe himself would conduct her to the King. "When will you go?" he said. "Rather to-day than to-morrow, " answered the messenger of God. 

This was the second convert of La Pucelle. The peasant _bonhomme_ first, the noble gentleman after him; not to say all the women wherever shewent, the gazing, weeping, admiring crowd which now followed her steps, and watched every opening of the door which concealed her from theireyes. The young gentleman was Jean de Novelonpont, "surnamed Jean deMetz": and so moved was he by the fervour of the girl, and by her strongsense of the necessity of immediate operations, that he proceeded atonce to make preparations for the journey. They would seem to havediscussed the dress she ought to wear, and Jeanne decided for manyobvious reasons to adopt the costume of a man--or rather boy. She must, one would imagine have been tall, for no remark is ever made on thissubject, as if her dress had dwarfed her, which is generally the casewhen a woman assumes the habit of a man: and probably with her peasantbirth and training, she was, though slim, strongly made and well knit, besides being at the age when the difference between boy and girl issometimes but little noticeable. 

In the meantime Baudricourt had not been idle. He must have been movedby the sight of Jeanne, at least to perceive a certain gravity in thebusiness for which he was not prepared; and her composure under thecuré's exorcism would naturally deepen the effect which her own mannersand aspect had upon all who were free of prejudice. Another singularevent, too, added weight to her character and demand. One day afterher return from Lorraine, February 12th, 1429, she intimated to all hersurroundings and specially to Baudricourt, that the King had suffered adefeat near Orleans, which made it still more necessary that she shouldbe at once conducted to him. It was found when there was time for thenews to come, that this defeat, the Battle of the Herrings, so-called, had happened as she said, at the exact time; and such a strange factadded much to the growing enthusiasm and excitement. Baudricourt is saidby Michelet to have sent off a secret express to the Court to ask whathe should do; but of this there seems to be no direct evidence, thoughlikelihood enough. The Court at Chinon contained a strong feminineelement, behind the scenes. And it might be found that there were usesfor the enthusiast, even if she did not turn out to be inspired. Nodoubt there were many comings and goings at this period which can onlybe traced confusedly through the depositions of Jeanne's companionstwenty-five years after. She had at least two interviews withBaudricourt before the exorcism of the curé and his consequent changeof procedure towards her. Then, escorted by her uncle Laxart, andapparently by Jean de Metz, she had made a pilgrimage to a shrine of St. Nicolas, as already mentioned, on which occasion, being near Nancy, shewas sent for by the Duke of Lorraine, then lying ill at his castlein that city, who had a fancy to consult the young prophetess, sorceress--who could tell what she was?--on the subject apparentlyof his illness. He was the son of Queen Yolande of Anjou, who wasmother-in-law to Charles VII. , and it would no doubt be thought of someimportance to secure his good opinion. Jeanne gave the exaltedpatient no light on the subject of his health, but only the (probablyunpleasing) advice to flee from the wrath of God and to be reconciledwith his wife, from whom he was separated. He too, however, was moved bythe sight of her and her straightforward, undeviating purpose. He gaveher four francs, Durand tells us, --not much of a present, --which shegave to her uncle, and which helped to buy her outfit. Probably he madea good report of her to his mother, for shortly after her return toVaucouleurs (I again follow Michelet who ought to be well informed)a messenger from Chinon arrived to take her to the King. (4) In thecouncils of that troubled Court, perhaps, the idea of a prodigy andmiraculous leader, though she was nothing but a peasant girl, wouldbe not without attraction, a thing to conjure withal, so far as themultitude were concerned. 

Anyhow from any point of view, in the hopeless condition of affairs, itwas expedient that nothing which gave promise of help, either real orvisionary, should lightly be rejected. There was much anxiety nodoubt in the careless Court still dancing and singing in the midstof calamity, but the reception of the ambitious peasant would form anexciting incident at least, if nothing more important and notable. 

Thus the whole anxious world of France stirred round that youthfulfigure in the little frontier town, repeating with many an alterationand exaggeration the sayings of Jeanne, and those popular superstitionsabout the Maid from Lorraine which might be so naturally applied to her. It would seem, indeed, that she had herself attached some importance tothis prophecy, for both her uncle Laxart and her hostess at Vaucouleursreport that she asked them if they had heard it: which question"stupefied" the latter, whose mind evidently jumped at once to theconviction that the prophecy was fulfilled. Not in Domremy itself, however, were these things considered with the same awe-stricken andadmiring faith. Nothing had softened the mood of Jacques d'Arc. It wasa shame to the village _prud' homme_ to think of his daughter away fromall the protection of home, living among men, encountering the youngSeigneurs who cared for no maiden's reputation, hearing the soldiers'rude talk, exposed to their insults, or worse still to their kindness. Probably even now he thought of her as surrounded by troopers andmen-at-arms, instead of the princes and peers with whom henceforthJeanne's lot was to be cast; but in the former case there wouldhave perhaps been less to fear than in the latter. Anyhow, Jeanne'scommunications with her family were more painful to her than had beenthe jeers of Baudricourt or the exorcism of the curé. They sent herangry orders to come back, threats of parental curses and abandonment. We may hope that the mother, grieved and helpless, had little to do withthis persecution. The woman who had nourished her children upon saintlylegend and Scripture story could scarcely have been hard upon the child, of whom she, better than any, knew the perfect purity and steadfastresolution. One of the little household at least, revolted by the sternfather's fury, perhaps secretly encouraged by the mother, broke away andjoined his sister at a later period. But we hear, during her lifetime, little or nothing of Pierre. 

Much time, however, was passed in these preliminaries. The finalstart was not made till the 23d February, 1429, when the permissionis supposed to have come by the hands of Colet de Vienne, the King'smessenger, who attended by a single archer, was to be her escort. Itis possible that he had no mission to this effect, but he certainlydid escort her to Chinon. The whole town gathered before the house ofBaudricourt to see her depart. Baudricourt, however, does not seem tohave provided any guard for her. Jean de Metz, who had so chivalrouslypledged himself to her service, with his friend De Poulengy, equally ready for adventure, each with his servant, formed her soleprotectors. (5) Jean de Metz had already sent her the clothes of one ofhis retainers, with the light breastplate and partial armour that suitedit; and the townspeople had subscribed to buy her a further outfit, anda horse which seems to have cost sixteen francs--not so small a sum inthose days as now. Laxart declares himself to have been responsible forthis outlay, though the money was afterwards paid by Baudricourt, whogave Jeanne a sword, which some of her historians consider a very poorgift: none, however, of her equipments would seem to have been costly. The little party set out thus, with a sanction of authority, from theCaptain's gate, the two gentlemen and the King's messenger at the headof the party with their attendants, and the Maid in the midst. "Go: andlet what will happen, " was the parting salutation of Baudricourt. Thegazers outside set up a cry when the decisive moment came, and someone, struck with the feeble force which was all the safeguard she had for herlong journey through an agitated country--perhaps a woman in the suddenpassion of misgiving which often follows enthusiasm, --called out toJeanne with an astonished outcry to ask how she could dare to go by sucha dangerous road. "It was for that I was born, " answered the fearlessMaid. The last thing she had done had been to write a letter to herparents, asking their pardon if she obeyed a higher command than theirs, and bidding them farewell. 

The French historians, with that amazement which they always show whenthey find a man behaving like a gentleman towards a woman confided tohis honour, all pause with deep-drawn breath to note that the awe ofJeanne's absolute purity preserved her from any unseemly overture, oreven evil thought, on the part of her companions. We need not takeup even the shadow of so grave a censure upon Frenchmen in general, although in the far distance of the fifteenth century. The two youngmen, thus starting upon a dangerous adventure, pledged by their honourto protect and convey her safely to the King's presence, were noble andgenerous cavaliers, and we may well believe had no evil thoughts. Theywere not, however, without an occasional chill of reflection whenonce they had taken the irrevocable step of setting out upon this wilderrand. They travelled by night to escape the danger of meeting bands ofBurgundians or English on the way, and sometimes had to ford a river toavoid the town, where they would have found a bridge. Sometimes, too, they had many doubts, Bertrand says, perhaps as to their reception atChinon, perhaps even whether their mission might not expose them to theridicule of their kind, if not to unknown dangers of magic and contactwith the Evil One, should this wonderful girl turn out no inspiredvirgin but a pretender or sorceress. Jean de Metz informs us that shebade them not to fear, that she had been sent to do what she was nowdoing; that her brothers in paradise would tell her how to act, and thatfor the last four or five years her brothers in paradise and her God hadtold her that she must go to the war to save the kingdom of France. Thisphrase must have struck his ear, as he thus repeats it. Her brothers inparadise! She had not apparently talked of them to anyone as yet, butnow no one could hinder her more, and she felt herself free to speak. A great calm seems to have been in her soul. She had at last begun herwork. How it was all to end for her she neither foresaw nor asked;she knew only what she had to do. When they ventured into a town sheinsisted on stopping to hear mass, bidding them fear nothing. "Godclears the way for me, " she said; "I was born for this, " and soproceeded safe, though threatened with many dangers. There is somethingthat breathes of supreme satisfaction and content in her repetition ofthose words. 

 (1) She was, however, acquainted with the simpler byword, that France should be destroyed by a woman and afterwards redeemed by a virgin, which she quoted to several persons on her first setting out. 

 (2) I have to thank Mr. Andrew Lang for making the course of these events quite clear to myself. 

 (3) Mr. Andrew Lang thinks that this appearance at Toul was made after she had finally left Domremy, and when she was already accompanied by the escort which was to attend her to Chinon. 

 (4) Mr. Andrew Lang will not hear of this. He thinks the man was a mere King's messenger with news, probably charged with the melancholy tidings of the loss at Rouvray (Battle of the Herrings): and that the fact he did accompany Jeanne and her little part was entirely accidental. 

 (5) Her brother Pierre is said by some to have been of the party. _La Chronique de la Pucelle_ says two of her brothers. Mr. Andrew Lang, however, tells us that Pierre did not join his sister's party till much later--in the beginning of June: and this is the statement of Jean de Metz. But Quicherat is also of opinion that they both fought in the relief of Orleans. 

CHAPTER III -- BEFORE THE KING. FEB. -APRIL, 1429. 

Jeanne and her little party were eleven days on the road, but do notseem to have encountered any special peril. They lodged sometimes in thesecurity of a convent, sometimes in a village hostel, pursuing the longand tedious way across the great levels of midland France, which hasso few features of beauty except in the picturesque towns with theircastles and churches, which the escort avoided. At length they pausedin the village of Fierbois not far from Chinon where the Court was, inorder to announce their arrival and ask for an audience, which was notimmediately accorded. Charles held his Court with incredible gaiety andfolly, in the midst of almost every disaster that could overtake a king, in the castle of Chinon on the banks of the Vienne. The situation andaspect of this noble building, now in ruins, is wonderfully like thatof Windsor Castle. The great walls, interrupted and strengthened byhuge towers, stretch along a low ridge of rocky hill, with the swift andclear river, a little broader and swifter than the Thames, flowing atits foot. The red and high-pitched roofs of the houses clustered betweenthe castle hill and the stream, give a point of resemblance the more. The large and ample dwelling, defensible, but with no thought of anyneed of defence, a midland castle surrounded by many a level league ofwealthy country, which no hostile force should ever have power to getthrough, must have looked like the home of a well-established royalty. There was no sound or sight of war within its splendid enclosure. Noble lords and gentlemen crowded the corridors; trains of gay ladies, attendant upon two queens, filled the castle with fine dresses and gayvoices. There had been but lately a dreadful and indeed shameful defeat, inflicted by a mere English convoy of provisions upon a large force ofFrench and Scottish soldiers, the former led by such men as Dunois, LaHire, Xaintrailles, etc. , the latter by the Constable of Scotland, JohnStuart--which defeat might well have been enough to subdue every soundof revelry: yet Charles's Court was ringing with music and pleasantry, as if peace had reigned around. 

It may be believed that there were many doubts and questions how toreceive this peasant from the fields, which prevented an immediatereply to her demand for an audience. From the first, de la Tremoille, Charles's Prime Minister and chief adviser, was strongly against anyencouragement of the visionary, or dealings with the supernatural; butthere would no doubt be others, hoping if not for a miraculous maid, yet at least for a passing wonder, who might kindle enthusiasm in thecountry and rouse the ignorant with hopes of a special blessing fromHeaven. The gayer and younger portion of the Court probably expecteda little amusement, above all, a new butt for their wit, or perhaps asoothsayer to tell their fortunes and promise good things to come. Theyhad not very much to amuse them, though they made the best of it. Thejoys of Paris were very far off; they were all but imprisoned in thisdull province of Touraine; nobody knew at what moment they might beforced to leave even that refuge. For the moment here was a new event, a little stir of interest, something to pass an hour. Jeanne had to waittwo days in Chinon before she was granted an audience, but consideringthe carelessness of the Court and the absence of any patron that was buta brief delay. 

The chamber of audience is now in ruins. A wild rose with long, arching, thorny branches and pale flowers, straggles over the greensward whereonce the floor was trod by so many gay figures. From the broken wall youlook sheer down upon the shining river; one great chimney, which atthat season must have been still the most pleasant centre of the large, draughty hall, shows at the end of the room, with a curious suggestionof warmth and light which makes ruin more conspicuous. The room musthave been on the ground floor almost level with the soil towards theinterior of the castle, but raised to the height of the cliffs outside. It was evening, an evening of March, and fifty torches lighted up theample room; many noble personages, almost as great as kings, and clothedin the bewildering splendour of the time, and more than three hundredcavaliers of the best names in France filled it to overflowing. Thepeasant girl from Domremy in the hose and doublet of a servant, alittle travel-worn after her tedious journey, was led in by one of thosesplendid seigneurs, dazzled with the grandeur she had never seen before, looking about her in wonder to see which was the King--while Charles, perhaps with boyish pleasure in the mystification, perhaps with a littlehalf-conviction stealing over him that there might be something more init, stood among the smiling crowd. 

The young stranger looked round upon all those amused, light-minded, sceptical faces, and without a moment's hesitation went forward andknelt down before him. "Gentil Dauphin, " she said, "God give you goodlife. " "But it is not I that am the King; there is the King, " saidCharles. "Gentil Prince, it is you and no other, " she said; then risingfrom her knee: "Gentil Dauphin, I am Jeanne the Maid. I am sent to youby the King of Heaven to tell you that you shall be consecrated andcrowned at Rheims, and shall be lieutenant of the King of Heaven, whois King of France. " The little masquerade had failed, the jest was over. There would be little more laughing among the courtiers, when they sawthe face of Charles grow grave. He took the new-comer aside, perhaps tothat deep recess of the window where in the darkening night the glimmerof the clear, flowing river, the great vault of sky would still bevisible dimly, outside the circle of the blazing interior with all itssmoky lights. 

Charles VII. Of France was, like many of his predecessors, a _pauvreSire_ enough. He had thought more of his amusements than of the troublesof his country; but a wild and senseless gaiety will sometimes springfrom despair as well as from lightness of heart; and after all, thedread responsibility, the sense that in all his helplessness andinability to do anything he was still the man who ought to do all, wouldseem to have moved him from time to time. A secret doubt in his heart, divulged to no man, had added bitterness to the conviction of his ownweakness. Was he indeed the heir of France? Had he any right to thatsustaining confidence which would have borne up his heart in the midstof every discouragement? His very mother had given him up and set himaside. He was described as the so-called Dauphin in treaties signed byCharles and Isabeau his parents. If anyone knew, she knew; and was itpossible that more powerful even than the English, more cruel than theBurgundians, this stain of illegitimacy was upon him, making all effortvain? There is no telling where the sensitive point is in any man'sheart, and little worthy as was this King, the story we are here toldhas a thrill of truth in it. It is reported by a certain Sala, whodeclares that he had it from the lips of Charles's favourite and closefollower, the Seigneur de Boisi, a courtier who, after the curiouscustom of the time, shared even the bed of his master. This was confidedto Boisi by the King in the deepest confidence, in the silence of thewakeful night:

"This was in the time of the good King Charles, when he knew not whatstep to take, and did nothing but think how to redeem his life: for asI have told you he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. The King inthis extreme thought, went in one morning to his oratory all alone; andthere he made a prayer to our Lord, in his heart, without pronouncingany words, in which he asked of Him devoutly that if he were indeed thetrue heir, descended from the royal House of France, and that justly thekingdom was his, that He would be pleased to guard and defend him, orat the worst to give him grace to escape into Spain or Scotland, whosepeople, from all antiquity, were brothers-in-arms, friends and allies ofthe kings of France, and that he might find a refuge there. "

Perhaps there is some excuse for a young man's endeavour to forgethimself in folly or even in dissipation when his secret thoughts are sodespairing as these. 

It was soon after this melancholy moment that the arrival of Jeannetook place. The King led her aside, touched as all were, by her look ofperfect sincerity and good faith; but it is she herself, not Charles, who repeats what she said to him. "I have to tell you, " said the youngmessenger of God, "on the part of my Lord (_Messire_) that you are thetrue heir of France and the son of the King; He has sent me toconduct you to Rheims that you may receive your consecration andyour crown, "--perhaps here, Jeanne caught some look which she did notunderstand in his eyes, for she adds with, one cannot but think a touchof sternness--"if you will. "

Was it a direct message from God in answer to his prayer, uttered withinhis own heart, without words, so that no one could have guessed thatsecret? At least it would appear that Charles thought so: for how shouldthis peasant maid know the secret fear that had gnawed at his heart?"When thou wast in the garden under the fig-tree I saw thee. " Greatwas the difference between the Israelite without guile and the troubledyoung man, with whose fate the career of a great nation was entangled;but it is not difficult to imagine what the effect must have been onthe mind of Charles when he was met by this strange, authoritativestatement, uttered like all that Jeanne said, _de la part de Dieu_. 

The impression thus made, however, was on Charles alone, and he wassurrounded by councillors, so much the more pedantic and punctilious asthey were incapable, and placed amidst pressing necessities with whichin themselves they had no power to cope. It may easily be allowed, also, that to risk any hopes still belonging to the hapless young King on theword of a peasant girl was in itself, according to every law of reason, madness and folly. She would seem to have had the women on her sidealways and at every point. The Church did not stir, or else was hostile;the commanders and military men about, regarded with scornful disgustthe idea that an enterprise which they considered hopeless should beconfided to an ignorant woman--all with perfect reason we are obliged toallow. Probably it was to gain time--yet without losing the aid of sucha stimulus to the superstitious among the masses--and to retard any rashundertaking--that it was proposed to subject Jeanne to an examinationof doctors and learned men touching her faith and the character ofher visions, which all this time had been of continual recurrence, yetcharged with no further revelation, no mystic creed, but only with theone simple, constantly repeated command. 

Accordingly, after some preliminary handling by half a dozen bishops, Jeanne was taken to Poitiers--where the university and the localparliament, all the learning, law, and ecclesiastical wisdom which wereon the side of the King, were assembled--to undergo this investigation. It is curious that the entire history of this wildest and strangest ofall visionary occurrences is to be found in a series of processes atlaw, each part recorded and certified under oath; but so it is. Thevillage maid was placed at the bar, before a number of acute legists, ecclesiastics, and statesmen, to submit her to a not-too-benevolentcross-examination. Several of these men were still alive at the timeof the Rehabilitation and gave their recollections of this examination, though its formal records have not been preserved. A Dominican monk, Aymer, one of an order she loved, addressed her gravely with theseverity with which that institution is always credited. "You say thatGod will deliver France; if He has so determined, He has no need ofmen-at-arms. " "Ah!" cried the girl, with perhaps a note of irritationin her voice, "the men must fight; it is God who gives the victory. " Toanother discomfited Brother, Jeanne, exasperated, answered with a littleroughness, showing that our Maid, though gentle as a child to all gentlesouls, was no piece of subdued perfection, but a woman of the fields, and lately much in the company of rough-spoken men. He was of Limoges, acertain Brother Seguin, "_bien aigre homme_, " and disposed apparentlyto weaken the trial by questions without importance: he asked her whatlanguage her celestial visitors spoke? "Better than yours, " answered thepeasant girl. He could not have been, as we say in Scotland, altogether"an ill man, " for he acknowledged that he spoke the patois of hisdistrict, and therefore that the blow was fair. But perhaps forthe moment he was irritated too. He asked her, a question equallyunnecessary, "do you believe in God?" to which with more and moreimpatience she made a similar answer: "Better than you do. " There wasnothing to be made of one so well able to defend herself. "Words areall very well, " said the monk, "but God would not have us believeyou, unless you show us some sign. " To this Jeanne made an answer moredignified, though still showing signs of exasperation, "I have not cometo Poitiers to give signs, " she said; "but take me to Orleans--I willthen show the signs I am sent to show. Give me as small a band as youplease, but let me go. "

The situation of Orleans was at the time a desperate one. It wasbesieged by a strong army of English, who had built a succession oftowers round the city, from which to assail it, after the manner of thetimes. The town lies in the midst of the plain of the Loire, with notso much as a hillock to offer any advantage to the besiegers. Thereforethese great works were necessary in face of a very strenuous resistance, and the possibility of provisioning the besieged, which their riversecured. The English from their high towers kept up a disastrousfire, which, though their artillery was of the rudest kind, did greatexecution. The siege was conducted by eminent generals. The workswere of themselves great fortifications, the assailants numerous, andstrengthened by the prestige of almost unbroken success; there seemedno human hope of the deliverance of the town unless by an overwhelmingarmy, which the King's party did not possess, or by some wonderful andutterly unexpected event. Jeanne had always declared the destructionof the English and the relief of Orleans to be the first step in hermission. 

Besides the formal and official examination of her faith and character, held at Poitiers, private inquests of all kinds were made concerningof the claims of the miraculous maid. She was visited by every curiousperson, man or woman, in the neighbourhood, and plied with endlessquestions, so that her simple personal story, and that of herrevelations--_mes voix_, as she called them--became familiarly knownfrom her own report, to the whole country round about. The women presseda question specially interesting--for no doubt, many a good mother halfconvinced otherwise, shook her head at Jeanne's costume--Why she worethe dress of a man? for which the Maid gave very good reasons: in thefirst place because it was the only dress for fighting, which, though sofar from her desires or from the habits of her life, was henceforward tobe her work; and also because in her strange circumstances, constrained as she was to live among men, she considered it safestfor herself--statements which evidently convinced the minds of thequestioners. It was, no doubt, good policy to make her thus widely andgenerally known, and the result was a daily growing enthusiasm for herand belief in her, in all classes. The result of the formal process wasthat the doctors could find nothing against her, and they reluctantlyallowed that the King might lawfully take what advantage he could of heroffered services. 

Jeanne was then brought back to Chinon, where she was lodged in one ofthe great towers still standing, though no special room is pointedout as hers. And there she was subjected to another process, morepenetrating still than the interrogations of the graver tribunals. TheQueens and their ladies and all the women of the Court took her in hand. They inquired into her history in every subtle and intimate feminineway, testing her innocence and purity; and once more she came outtriumphant. The final judgment was given as follows: "After hearing allthese reports, the King taking into consideration the great goodnessthat was in the Maid, and that she declared herself to be sent byGod, it was by the said Seigneur and his council determined that fromhenceforward he should make use of her for his wars, since it was forthis that she was sent. "

It was now necessary to equip Jeanne for her service. She had a_maison_, an _état majeur_, or staff, formed for her, the chief ofwhich, Jean d'Aulon, already distinguished and worthy of such a trustnever left her thenceforward until the end of her active career. Herchaplain, Jean Pasquerel, also followed her fortunes faithfully. Charleswould have given her a sword to replace the probably indifferent weapongiven her by Baudricourt at Vaucouleurs; but Jeanne knew where to findthe sword destined for her. She gave orders that someone should be sentto Fierbois, the village at which she had paused on her way to Chinon, to fetch a sword which would be found there buried behind the high altarof the church of St. Catherine. To make this as little miraculous aspossible, we are told by some historians that it was common for knightsto be buried with their arms, and that Jeanne, in her visit to thischurch, where she heard three masses in succession to make up for theabsence of constant religious services on her journey--had probablyseen some tomb or other token that such an interment had taken place. However, as we are compelled to receive the far greater miracle ofJeanne herself and her work, without explanation, it is foolish to takethe trouble to attempt any explanation of so small a matter as this. Thesword in fact was found, by the clergy of the church, and was by themcleaned and polished and put in a scabbard of crimson velvet, scatteredover with fleur-de-lys in gold, for her use. Her standard, which sheconsidered of the greatest importance was made apparently at Tours. Itwas of white linen, fringed with silk and embroidered with a figure ofthe Saviour holding a globe in His hands, while an angel knelt at eitherside in adoration. Jhesus' Maria was inscribed at the foot. A repetitionof this banner, which must have been re-copied from age to age is to beseen now at Tours. Having indicated the exact device to be emblazonedupon the banner, as dictated to her by her saints, --Margaret andCatherine--Jeanne announced her intention of carrying it herself, asomewhat surprising office for one who was to act as a general. But itwas the command of her heavenly guides. "Take the standard on the partof God, and carry it boldly, " they had said. She had, besides, asimple, half-childish intention of her own in this, which she explainedshame-faced--she had no wish to use her sword though she loved it, andwould kill no man. The banner was a more safe occupation, and saved herfrom all possibility of blood-shedding; it must however, have requiredthe robust arm of a peasant to sustain the heavy weight. 

It will show how long a time all these examinations and preparations hadtaken when we read that Jeanne set out from Blois, where she had passedsome time in military preparations, only on the 27th day of April;nearly two whole months had thus been taken up in testing her truth, andarranging details, trifling and unnecessary in her eyes:--a period whichhad been passed in great anxiety by the people of Orleans, with the hugebastilles of the English--three of which were named Paris, Rouen, andLondon--towering round them, their provisions often intercepted, allthe business of life come to a standstill, and the overwhelmingresponsibility upon them of being almost the last barrier between theinvader and the final subjugation of France. It is strange to add that, judging by ordinary rules, the garrison of Orleans ought to have beenquite sufficient in itself in numbers and science of war, to have beatenand dispersed the English force which had thus succeeded in shuttingthem in; there were many notable captains among them, with Dunois, known as the Bastard of Orleans, one of the most celebrated and braveof French generals, at their head. Dunois was in no way inferior to thegenerals of the English army; he was popular, beloved by the people andsoldiers alike, and though illegitimate, of the House of Orleans, one ofthe native seigneurs of the place. The wonder is how he and his officerspermitted the building of these towers, and the shutting in of the townwhich they were quite strong enough to protect. But it was a losing gamewhich they were playing, a part which does not suit the genius of thenation; and the superstition in favour of the English who had won somany battles with all the disadvantages on their side, --cutting thefinest armies to pieces--was strong upon the imagination of the time. Itseemed a fate which no valour or skill upon the side of the French couldavert. Dunois, himself an unlikely person, one would have thought, toyield the honour of the fight to a woman, seems to have perceivedthat without a strong counter-motive, not within the range of ordinarymethods, the situation was beyond hope. 

Accordingly, on the 27th or 28th of April, Jeanne set out at the head ofher little army, accompanied by a great number of generals and captains. She had been equipped by the Queen of Sicily (with a touch of that keensense of decorative effect which belonged to the age) in white armourinlaid with silver--all shining like her own St. Michael himself, aradiance of whiteness and glory under the sun--armed _de toutes piècessauve la teste_, her uncovered head rising in full relief from thedazzling breastplate and gorget. This is the description given of her byan eye-witness a little later. The country is flat as the palm of one'shand. The white armour must have flashed back the sun for miles andmiles of the level road, to the eyes which from the height of anyneighbouring tower watched the party setting out. It is all fertile now, the richest plain, and even then, corn and wine must have been in fullbourgeon, the great fresh greenness of the big leaves coming out uponsuch low stumps of vine as were left in the soil; but the devastatedcountry was in those days covered with a wild growth like the _macchia_of Italian wilds, which half hid the movements of the expedition. Theywent by the Loire to Tours, where Jeanne had been assigned a dwelling ofher own, with the estate of a general; and from thence to Blois, wherethey had to wait for some days while the convoy of provisions, whichthey were to convey to Orleans, was being prepared. And there Jeannefulfilled one of the preliminary duties of her mission. She had informedher examiners at Poitiers that she had been commanded to write to theEnglish generals before attacking them, appealing to them _de la part deDieu_, to give up their conquests, and leave France to the French. The letter which we quote would seem to have been dictated by her atPoitiers, probably to the confessor who now formed part of her suite andwho attended her wherever she went:

JHESUS MARIA. 

King of England, and you Duke of Bedford calling yourself Regent ofFrance, you, William de la Poule, Comte de Sulford, John, Lord ofTalbot, and you Thomas, Lord of Scales, who call yourself lieutenantsof the said Bedford, listen to the King of Heaven: Give back to the Maidwho is here sent on the part of God the King of Heaven, the keys of allthe good towns which you have taken by violence in His France. She isready to make peace if you will hear reason and be just towards Franceand pay for what you have taken. And you archers, brothers-in-arms, gentles and others who are before the town of Orleans, go in peace onthe part of God; if you do not so you will soon have news of the Maidwho will see you shortly to your great damage. King of England, if youdo not this, I am captain in this war, and in whatsoever place in FranceI find your people I will make them go away. I am sent here on the partof God the King of Heaven to push you all forth of France. If you obey Iwill be merciful. And be not strong in your own opinion, for you do nothold the kingdom from God the Son of the Holy Mary, but it is held byCharles the true heir, for God, the King of Heaven so wills, and it isrevealed by the Maid who shall enter Paris in good company. If you willnot believe this news on the part of God and the Maid, in whatever placeyou may find yourselves we shall make our way there, and make so greata commotion as has not been in France for a thousand years, if you willnot hear reason. And believe this, that the King of Heaven will sendmore strength to the Maid than you can bring against her in all yourassaults, to her and to her good men-at-arms. You, Duke of Bedford, theMaid prays and requires you to destroy no more. If you act according toreason you may still come in her company where the French shall do thegreatest work that has ever been done for Christianity. Answer then ifyou will still continue against the city of Orleans. If you do soyou will soon recall it to yourself by great misfortunes. Written theSaturday of Holy Week (22 March, 1429). (1)

Jeanne had by this time made a wonderful moral revolution in her littlearmy; most likely she had not been in the least aware what an army was, until this moment; but frank and fearless, she had penetrated intoevery corner, and it was not in her to permit those abuses at which anordinary captain has to smile. The pernicious and shameful crowd of campfollowers fled before her like shadows before the day. She stopped thebig oaths and unthinking blasphemies which were so common, so that LaHire, one of the chief captains, a rough and ready Gascon, was reducedto swear by his _bâton_, no more sacred name being permitted to him. Perhaps this was the origin of the harmless swearing which abounds inFrance, meaning probably just as much and as little as bigger oaths incareless mouths; but no doubt the soldiers' language was very unfit forgentle ears. Jeanne moved among the wondering ranks, all radiant in hersilver armour and with her virginal undaunted countenance, exhorting allthose rude and noisy brothers to take thought of their duties here, andof the other life that awaited them. She would stop the march of thearmy that a conscience-stricken soldier might make his confession, anddesired the priests to hear it if necessary without ceremony, or church, under the first tree. Her tender heart was such that she shrank from anyman's death, and her hair rose up on her head, as she said, at the sightof French blood shed--although her mission was to shed it on all sidesfor a great end. But the one thing she could not bear was thateither Frenchmen or Englishmen should die unconfessed, "unhouseled, disappointed, unannealed. " The army went along attended by songs ofchoristers and masses of priests, the grave and solemn music of theChurch accompanied strangely by the fanfares and bugle notes. What astrange procession to pass along the great Loire in its spring fulness, the raised banners and crosses, and that dazzling white figure, alleffulgence, reflected in the wayward, quick flowing stream!

La Hire, who is like a figure out of Dumas, and indeed did service asa model to that delightful romancer, had come from Orleans to escortJeanne upon her way, and Dunois met her as she approached the town. There could not be found more unlikely companions than these two, toconduct to a great battle the country maid who was to carry the honoursof the day from them both, and make men fight like heroes, who underthem did nothing but run away. The candour and true courage of suchleaders in circumstances so extraordinary, are beyond praise, for it wasan offence both to their pride and skill in their profession, had shebeen anything less than the messenger of God which she claimed tobe; and these rude soldiers were not men to be easily moved by devoutimaginations. There would seem, however, even in the case of the greaterof the two, to have arisen a strange friendship and mutual understandingbetween the famous man of war and the peasant girl. Jeanne, alwaysstraightforward and simple, speaks to him, not with the downcast eyes ofher humility, but as an equal, as if the great Dunois had been a _prud'homme_ of her own degree. There is no appearance indeed that the Maidallowed herself to be overborne now by any shyness or undue humility. She speaks loudly, so as to be heard by those fighting men, takingsomething of their own brief and decisive tone, often even impatient, asone who would not be put aside either by cunning or force. 

Her meeting with Dunois makes this at once evident. She had beendeceived in the manner of her approach to Orleans, her companions, amongwhom there were several field-marshals and distinguished leaders, takingadvantage of her ignorance of the place to lead her by the opposite bankof the river instead of that on which the English towers were built, which she desired to attack at once. This was the beginning of a longseries of deceits and hostile combinations, by which at every stepof her way she was met and retarded; but it turned, as these devicesgenerally did, to the discomfiture of the adverse captains. She crossedthe river at Chécy above Orleans, to meet Dunois who had come so far tomeet her. It will be seen by the conversation which she held with himon his first appearance, how completely Jeanne had learnt to assertherself, and how much she had overcome any fear of man. "Are you theBastard of Orleans?" she said. "I am; and glad of your coming, " hereplied. "Is it you who have had me led to this side of the river andnot to the bank on which Talbot is and his English?" He answered thathe and the wisest of the leaders had thought it the best and safestway. "The counsel of God, our Lord, is more sure and more powerful thanyours, " she replied. The expedition, as a matter of fact, had to turnback, and to lose precious time, there being, it is to be presumed, no means of transporting so large a force across the river. The largeconvoy of provisions which Jeanne brought was embarked in boats whilethe majority of the army returned to Blois, in order to cross by thebridge. 

Jeanne, however, having freely expressed her opinion, adapted herself tothe circumstances, though extremely averse to separate herself from hersoldiers, good men who had confessed and prepared their souls for everyemergency. She finally consented, however, to ride on with Dunois and LaHire. The wind was against the convoy, so that the heavy boats, deeplyladen with beeves and corn, had a dangerous and slow voyage before them. "Have patience, " cried Jeanne; "by the help of God all will go well";and immediately the wind changed, to the astonishment and joy of all, and the boats arrived in safety "in spite of the English, who offered nohindrance whatever, " as she had predicted. The little party made theirway along the bank, and in the twilight of the April evening, abouteight o'clock, entered Orleans. The Deliverer, it need not be said, washailed with joy indescribable. She was on a white horse, and carried, Dunois says, the banner in her hand, though it was carried before herwhen she entered the town. The white figure in the midst of those darklygleaming mailed men, would in itself throw a certain glory through thedimness of the night, as she passed the gates and came into view by theblaze of all the torches, and the lights in the windows, over the darkswarming crowds of the citizens. Her white banner waving, her whitearmour shining, it was little wonder that the throng that filled thestreets received the Maid "as if they had seen God descending amongthem. " "And they had good reason, " says the Chronicle, "for they hadsuffered many disturbances, labours, and pains, and, what is worse, great doubt whether they ever should be delivered. But now all werecomforted, as if the siege were over, by the divine strength that was inthis simple Maid whom they regarded most affectionately, men, women, andlittle children. There was a marvellous press around her to touch heror the horse on which she rode, so much so that one of the torchbearersapproached too near and set fire to her pennon; upon which she touchedher horse with her spurs, and turning him cleverly, extinguished theflame, as if she had long followed the wars. "

There could have been nothing she resembled so much as St. Michael, thewarrior-angel, who, as all the world knew, was her chief counsellor andguide, and who, no doubt, blazed, a familiar figure, from some window inthe cathedral to which this his living picture rode without a pause, togive thanks to God before she thought of refreshment or rest. She spoketo the people who surrounded her on every side as she went on throughthe tumultuous streets, bidding them be of good courage and that if theyhad faith they should escape from all their troubles. And it was onlyafter she had said her prayers and rendered her thanksgiving, thatshe returned to the house selected for her--the house of an importantpersonage, Jacques Boucher, treasurer to the Duke of Orleans, not likethe humble places where she had formerly lodged. The houses of that agewere beautiful, airy and light, with much graceful ornament and solidcomfort, the arched and vaulted Gothic beginning to give place to thosemodels of domestic architecture which followed the Renaissance, withtheir ample windows and pleasant space and breadth. There the table wasspread with a joyous meal in honour of this wonderful guest, to which, let us hope, Dunois and La Hire and the rest did full justice. ButJeanne was indifferent to the feast. She mixed with water the winepoured for her into a silver cup, and dipped her bread in it, fiveor six small slices. The visionary peasant girl cared for none of thedainty meats. And then she retired to the comfort of a peaceful chamber, where the little daughter of the house shared her bed: strange returnto the days when Hauvette and Mengette in Domremy lay by her side andtalked as girls love to do, through half the silent night. Perhapslittle Charlotte, too, lay awake with awe to wonder at that other younghead on the pillow, a little while ago shut into the silver helmet, andshining like the archangel's. The _état majeur_, the Chevalier d'Aulon, Jean de Metz, and Bertrand de Poulengy, who had never left her, firstfriends and most faithful, and her brother Pierre d'Arc, were lodged inthe same house. It was the last night of April, 1429. 

 (1) The dates must of course be reckoned by the old style. -- This letter was dispatched from Tours, during her pause there. 

CHAPTER IV -- THE RELIEF OF ORLEANS. MAY 1-8, 1429. 

Next morning there was a council of war among the many leaders nowcollected within the town. It was the eager desire of Jeanne that anassault should be made at once, in all the enthusiasm of the moment, upon the English towers, without waiting even for the arrival of thelittle army which she had preceded. But the captains of the defence whohad borne the heat and burden of the day, and who might naturallyenough be irritated by the enthusiasm with which this stranger had beenreceived, were of a different opinion. I quote here a story, for whichI am told there is no foundation whatever, touching a personage whoprobably never existed, so that the reader may take it as he pleases, with indulgence for the writer's weakness, or indignation at hercredulity. It seems to me, however, to express very naturally asentiment which must have existed among the many captains who had beenfighting unsuccessfully for months in defence of the beleaguered city. A certain Guillaume de Gamache felt himself insulted above all by thesuggestion. "What, " he cried, "is the advice of this hussy from thefields (_une péronnelle de bas lieu_) to be taken against that of aknight and captain! I will fold up my banner and become again a simplesoldier. I would rather have a nobleman for my master than a woman whomnobody knows. "

Dunois, who was too wise to weaken the forces at his command by such aquarrel, is said to have done his best to reconcile and soothe the angrycaptain. This, however, if it was true, was only a mild instance of theperpetual opposition which the Maid encountered from the very beginningof her career and wherever she went. Notwithstanding her victories, sheremained through all her career a _péronnelle_ to these men of war (withthe noble exception, of course, of Alençon, Dunois, Xaintrailles, LaHire, and others). They were sore and wounded by her appearance and herclaims. If they could cheat her, balk her designs, steal a march in anyway, they did so, from first to last, always excepting the few who werefaithful to her. Dunois could afford to be magnanimous, but the lessermen were jealous, envious, embittered. A _péronnelle_, a woman nobodyknew! And they themselves were belted knights, experienced soldiers, ofthe best blood of France. It was not unnatural; but this atmosphereof hate, malice, and mortification forms the background of the picturewherever the Maid moves in her whiteness, illuminating to us the wholescene. The English hated her lustily as their enemy and a witch, castingspells and enchantments so that the strength was sucked out of a man'sarm and the courage from his heart: but the Frenchmen, all but thosewho were devoted to her, regarded her with an ungenerous opposition, thehate of men shamed and mortified by every triumph she achieved. 

Jeanne was angry, too, and disappointed, more than she had been by alldiscouragements before. She had believed, perhaps, that once in thefield these oppositions would be over, and that her mission would berapidly accomplished. But she neither rebelled nor complained. Whatshe did was to occupy herself about what she felt to be her business, without reference to any commander. She sent out two heralds, (1) whowere attached to her staff, and therefore at her personal disposal, tosummon once more Talbot and Glasdale (Classidas, as the French calledhim) _de la part de Dieu_ to evacuate their towers and return home. Itwould seem that in her miraculous soul she had a visionary hope thatthis appeal might be successful. What so noble, what so Christian, asthat the one nation should give up, of free-will, its attempt upon thefreedom and rights of another, if once the duty were put simply beforeit--and both together joining hands, march off, as she had alreadysuggested, to do the noblest deed that had ever yet been done forChristianity? That same evening she rode forth with her little train;and placing herself on the town end of the bridge (which had been brokenin the middle), as near as the breach would permit to the bastille, orfort of the Tourelles, which was built across the further end ofthe bridge, on the left side of the Loire--called out to the enemy, summoning them once more to withdraw while there was time. She wasoverwhelmed, as might have been expected, with a storm of abusive shoutsand evil words, Classidas and his captains hurrying to the walls tocarry on the fierce exchange of abuse. To be called dairy-maid and_péronnelle_ was a light matter, but some of the terms used were socruel that, according to some accounts, she betrayed her womanhood bytears, not prepared apparently for the use of such foul weapons againsther. The _Journal du Siège_ declares, however, that she was "aucunementyrée" (angry), but answered that they lied, and rode back to the city. 

The next Sunday, the 1st of May, Dunois, alarmed by the delay of hismain body, set out for Blois to meet them, and we are told that Jeanneaccompanied him to the special point of danger, where the English fromtheir fortifications might have stopped his progress, and took up aposition there, along with La Hire, between the expedition and theenemy. But in the towers not a man budged, not a shot was fired. It wasagain a miracle, and she had predicted it. The party of Dunois marchedon in safety, and Jeanne returned to Orleans, once more receiving onthe breeze some words of abuse from the defenders of those battlements, which sent forth no more dangerous missile, and replying again withher summons, "_Retournez de la par Dieu à Angleterre. _" The townsfolkwatched her coming and going with an excitement impossible to describe;they walked by the side of her charger to the cathedral, which wasthe end of every progress; they talked to her, all speaking together, pressing upon her--and she to them, bidding them to have no fear. "Messire has sent me, " she said again and again. She went out again, Wednesday, 4th May, on the return of Dunois, to meet the army, with thesame result, that they entered quietly, the English not firing a shot. 

On this same day, in the afternoon, after the early dinner, therehappened a wonderful scene. Jeanne, it appeared, had fallen asleep afterher meal, no doubt tired with the expedition of the morning, and herchief attendant, D'Aulon, who had accompanied Dunois to fetch the troopsfrom Blois, being weary after his journey, had also stretched himselfon a couch to rest. They were all tired, the entry of the troopshaving been early in the morning, a fact of which the angry captains ofOrleans, who had not shared in that expedition, took advantage to makea secret sortie unknown to the new chiefs. All at once the Maid awoke inagitation and alarm. Her "voices" had awakened her from her sleep. "Mycouncil tell me to go against the English, " she cried; "but if to assailtheir towers or to meet Fastolfe I cannot tell. " As she came to the fullcommand of her faculties her trouble grew. "The blood of our soldiers isflowing, " she said; "why did they not tell me? My arms, my arms!" Thenshe rushed down stairs to find her page amusing himself in the tranquilafternoon, and called to him for her horse. All was quiet, and no doubther attendants thought her mad: but D'Aulon, who knew better than tocontradict his mistress, armed her rapidly, and Luis, the page, broughther horse to the door. By this time there began to rise a distant rumourand outcry, at which they all pricked their ears. As Jeanne put her footin the stirrup she perceived that her standard was wanting, and calledto the page, Louis de Contes, above, to hand it to her out of thewindow. Then with the heavy flag-staff in her hand she set spurs to herhorse, her attendants one by one clattering after her, and dashed onward"so that the fire flashed from the pavement under the horse's feet. "

Jeanne's presentiment was well-founded. There had been a privateexpedition against the English fort of St. Loup carried out quietly tosteal a march upon her--Gamache, possibly, or other malcontents of histemper, in the hope perhaps of making use of her prestige to gain avictory without her presence. But it had happened with this sally aswith many others which had been made from Orleans; and when Jeanneappeared outside the gate which she and the rest of the followersafter her had almost forced--coming down upon them at full gallop, herstandard streaming, her white armour in a blaze of reflection, she metthe fugitives flying back towards the shelter of the town. She does notseem to have paused or to have deigned to address a word to them, thoughthe troop of soldiers and citizens who had snatched arms and flungthemselves after her, arrested and turned them back. Straight to thefoot of the tower she went, Dunois startled in his turn, thunderingafter her. It is not for a woman to describe, any more than it was for awoman to execute such a feat of war. It is said that she put herself atthe head of the citizens, Dunois at the head of the soldiers. One momentof pity and horror and heart-sickness Jeanne had felt when she metseveral wounded men who were being carried towards the town. She hadnever seen French blood shed before, and the dreadful thought thatthey might die unconfessed, overwhelmed her soul; but this was but anincident of her breathless gallop to the encounter. To isolate the towerwhich was attacked was the first necessity, and then the conflict wasfurious--the English discouraged, but fighting desperately againsta mysterious force which overwhelmed them, at the same time that itredoubled the ardour of every Frenchman. Lord Talbot sent forth partiesfrom the other forts to help their companions, but these were met in themidst by the rest of the army arriving from Orleans, which stoppedtheir course. It was not till evening, "the hour of Vespers, " that thebastille was finally taken, with great slaughter, the Orleanists givinglittle quarter. During these dreadful hours the Maid was everywherevisible with her standard, the most marked figure, shouting to her men, weeping for the others, not fighting herself so far as we hear, butalways in the front of the battle. When she went back to Orleanstriumphant, she led a band of prisoners with her, keeping a wary eyeupon them that they might not come to harm. 

The next day, May 5th, was the Feast of the Ascension, and it was spentby Jeanne in rest and in prayer. But the other leaders were not sodevout. They held a crowded and anxious council of war, taking care thatno news of it should reach the ears of the Maid. When, however, they haddecided upon the course to pursue they sent for her, and intimated toher their decision to attack only the smaller forts, which she heardwith great impatience, not sitting down, but walking about the room indisappointment and anger. It is difficult(2) for the present writer tofollow the plans of this council or to understand in what way Jeannefelt herself contradicted and set aside. However it was, the fact seemscertain that their plan failed at first, the English having themselvesabandoned one of the smaller forts on the right side of the river andconcentrated their forces in the greater ones of Les Augustins andLes Tourelles on the left bank. For all this, reference to the map isnecessary, which will make it quite clear. It was Classidas, as heis called, Glasdale, the most furious enemy of France, and one of thebravest of the English captains who held the former, and for a momentsucceeded in repulsing the attack. The fortune of war seemed about toturn back to its former current, and the French fell back on the boatswhich had brought them to the scene of action, carrying the Maid withthem in their retreat. But she perceived how critical the moment was, and reining up her horse from the bank, down which she was being forcedby the crowd, turned back again, closely followed by La Hire, and atonce, no doubt, by the stouter hearts who only wanted a leader--andcharging the English, who had regained their courage as the whitearmour of the witch disappeared, and were in full career after thefugitives--drove them back to their fortifications, which they gainedwith a rush, leaving the ground strewn with the wounded and dying. Jeanne herself did not draw bridle till she had planted her standard onthe edge of the moat which surrounded the tower. 

Michelet is very brief concerning this first victory, and claims onlythat "the success was due in part to the Maid, " although the crowd ofcaptains and men-at-arms where by themselves quite sufficient for thework, had there been any heart in them. But this was true to fact inalmost every case: and it is clear that she was simply the heart, whichwas the only thing wanted to those often beaten Frenchmen; where shewas, where they could hear her robust young voice echoing over all thedin, they were as men inspired; when the impetus of their flight carriedher also away, they became once more the defeated of so many battles. The effect upon the English was equally strong; when the back of Jeannewas turned, they were again the men of Agincourt; when she turnedupon them, her white breastplate blazing out like a star, the sunshinestriking dazzling rays from her helmet, they trembled before thesorceress; an angel to her own side, she was the very spirit of magicand witchcraft to her opponents. Classidas, or which captain soeverof the English side it might happen to be, blaspheming from thebattlements, hurled all the evil names of which a trooper was capable, upon her, while she from below summoned them, in different tones ofappeal and menace, calling upon them to yield, to go home, to give upthe struggle. Her form, her voice are always evident in the midst of thegreat stone bullets, the cloth-yard shafts that were flying--they wereso near, the one above, the other below, that they could hear each otherspeak. 

On the 7th of May the fort of Les Augustins on the left bank was taken. It will be seen by reference to the map, that this bastille, an ancientconvent, stood at some distance from the river, in peaceful times alittle way beyond the bridge, and no doubt a favourite Sunday walkfrom the city. The bridge was now closed up by the frowning bulk of theTourelles built upon it, with a smaller tower or "boulevard" on theleft bank communicating with it by a drawbridge. When Les Augustins wastaken, the victorious French turned their arms against this boulevard, but as night had fallen by this time, they suspended the fighting, having driven back the English, who had made a sally in help of LesAugustins. Here in the dark, which suited their purpose, another councilwas held. The captains decided that they would now pursue their victoryno further, the town being fully supplied with provisions and joyfulwith success, but that they would await the arrival of reinforcementsbefore they proceeded further; probably their object was solely to getrid of Jeanne, to conclude the struggle without her, and secure thecredit of it. The council was held in the camp within sight of the fort, by the light of torches; after she had been persuaded to withdraw, onaccount of a slight wound in her foot from a calthrop, it is said. This message was sent after her into Orleans. She heard it with quietdisdain. "You have held your council, and I have had mine, " she saidcalmly to the messengers; then turning to her chaplain, "Come to meto-morrow at dawn, " she said, "and do not leave me; I shall have muchto do. My blood will be shed. I shall be wounded(3) to-morrow, " pointingabove her right breast. Up to this time no weapon had touched her; shehad stood fast among all the flying arrows, the fierce play of spear andsword, and had taken no harm. 

In the morning early, at sunrise, she dashed forth from the town again, though the generals, her hosts, and all the authorities who were in theplot endeavoured to detain her. "Stay with us, Jeanne, " said the peoplewith whom she lodged--official people, much above the rank of theMaid--"stay and help us to eat this fish fresh out of the river. " "Keepit for this evening, " she said, "and I shall return by the bridge andbring you some Goddens to have their share. " She had already brought ina party of the Goddens on the night before to protect them from the furyof the crowd. The peculiarity of this promise lay in the fact thatthe bridge was broken, and could not be passed, even without thatdifficulty, without passing through the Tourelles and the boulevardwhich blocked it at the other end. At the closed gates another greatofficial stood by, to prevent her passing, but he was soon swept awayby the flood of enthusiasts who followed the white horse and its whiterider. The crowd flung themselves into the boats to cross the river withher, horse and man. Les Tourelles stood alone, black and frowning acrossthe shining river in its early touch of golden sunshine, on thesouth side of the Loire, the lower tower of the boulevard on the bankblackened with the fire of last night's attack, and the smoking ruinsof Les Augustins beyond. The French army, whom Orleans had been busyall night feeding and encouraging, lay below, not yet apparently movingeither for action or retreat. Jeanne plunged among them like a ray oflight, D'Aulon carrying her banner; and passing through the ranks, she took up her place on the border of the moat of the boulevard. Herfollowers rushed after with that _élan_ of desperate and uncalculatingvalour which was the great power of the French arms. In the midst ofthe fray the girl's clear voice, _assez voix de femme_, kept shoutingencouragements, _de la part de Dieu_ always her war-cry. "_Bon cœur, bonne espérance_, " she cried--"the hour is at hand. " But after hours ofdesperate fighting the spirit of the assailants began to flag. Jeanne, who apparently did not at any time take any active part in the struggle, though she exposed herself to all its dangers, seized a ladder, placedit against the wall, and was about to mount, when an arrow struck herfull in the breast. The Maid fell, the crowd closed round; for a momentit seemed as if all were lost. 

Here we have over again in the fable our friend Gamache. It is a prettystory, and though we ask no one to take it for absolute fact, there isno reason why some such incident might not have occurred. Gamache, theangry captain who rather than follow a _péronnelle_ to the field wasprepared to fold his banner round its staff, and give up his rank, issupposed to have been the nearest to her when she fell. It was he whocleared the crowd from about her and raised her up. "Take my horse, "he said, "brave creature. Bear no malice. I confess that I was in thewrong. " "It is I that should be wrong if I bore malice, " cried Jeanne, "for never was a knight so courteous" (_chevalier si bien apprins_). She was surrounded immediately by her people, the chaplain whom she hadbidden to keep near her, her page, all her special attendants, who wouldhave conveyed her out of the fight had she consented. Jeanne had thecourage to pull the arrow out of the wound with her own hand, --"it stooda hand breadth out" behind her shoulder--but then, being but a girl andthis her first experience of the sort, notwithstanding her armour andher rank as General-in-Chief, she cried with the pain, this commanderof seventeen. Somebody then proposed to charm the wound with anincantation, but the Maid indignant, cried out, "I would rather die. "Finally a compress soaked in oil was placed upon it, and Jeanne withdrewa little with her chaplain, and made her confession to him, as one whomight be about to die. 

But soon her mood changed. She saw the assailants waver and fall back;the attack grew languid, and Dunois talked of sounding the retreat. Uponthis she got to her feet, and scrambled somehow on her horse. "Rest alittle, " she implored the generals about her, "eat something, refreshyourselves: and when you see my standard floating against the wall, forward, the place is yours. " They seem to have done as she suggested, making a pause, while Jeanne withdrew a little into a vineyard closeby, where there must have been a tuft of trees, to afford her a littleshelter. There she said her prayers, and tasted that meat to eat thatmen wot not of, which restores the devout soul. Turning back she tookher standard from her squire's hand, and planted it again on the edge ofthe moat. "Let me know, " she said, "when the pennon touches the wall. "The folds of white and gold with the benign countenance of the Saviour, now visible, now lost in the changes of movement, floated over theirheads on the breeze of the May day. "Jeanne, " said the squire, "ittouches!" "On!" cried the Maid, her voice ringing through the momentaryquiet. "On! All is yours!" The troops rose as one man; they flungthemselves against the wall, at the foot of which that white figurestood, the staff of her banner in her hand, shouting, "All is yours. "Never had the French _élan_ been so wildly inspired, so irresistible;they swarmed up the wall "as if it had been a stair. " "Do theythink themselves immortal?" the panic-stricken English cried amongthemselves--panic-stricken not by their old enemies, but by the whitefigure at the foot of the wall. Was she a witch, as had been thought?was not she indeed the messenger of God? The dazzling rays that shotfrom her armour seemed like butterflies, like doves, like angelsfloating about her head. They had thought her dead, yet here she stoodagain without a sign of injury; or was it Michael himself, the greatarchangel whom she resembled do much? Arrows flew round her on everyside but never touched her. She struck no blow, but the folds of herstandard blew against the wall, and her voice rose through all thetumult. "On! Enter! _de la part de Dieu!_ for all is yours. "

The Maid had other words to say, "_Renty, renty_, Classidas!" she cried, "you called me vile names, but I have a great pity for your soul. " Heon his side showered down blasphemies. He was at the last gasp; onedesperate last effort he made with a handful of men to escape from theboulevard by the drawbridge to Les Tourelles, which crossed a narrowstrip of the river. But the bridge had been fired by a fire-ship fromOrleans and gave way under the rush of the heavily-armed men; and thefierce Classidas and his companions were plunged into the river, where aknight in armour, like a tower falling, went to the bottom in a moment. Nearly thirty of them, it is said, plunged thus into the great Loire andwere seen no more. 

It was the end of the struggle. The French flag swung forth on theparapet, the French shout rose to heaven. Meanwhile a strange sight wasto be seen--the St. Michael in shining armour, who had led that assault, shedding tears for the ferocious Classidas, who had cursed her with hislast breath. "_J'ai grande pitié de ton âme. _" Had he but had time toclear his soul and reconcile himself with God!

This was virtually the end of the siege of Orleans. The broken bridge onthe Loire had been rudely mended, with a great _gouttière_ and planks, and the people of Orleans had poured out over it to take the Tourellesin flank--the English being thus taken between Jeanne's army on the oneside and the citizens on the other. The whole south bank of the riverwas cleared, not an Englishman left to threaten the richest part ofFrance, the land flowing with milk and honey. And though therestill remained several great generals on the other side with strongfortifications to fall back upon, they seem to have been paralysed, anddid not strike a blow. Jeanne was not afraid of them, but her ardourto continue the fight dropped all at once; enough had been done. Sheawaited the conclusion with confidence. Needless to say that Orleans washalf mad with joy, every church sounding its bells, singing its song oftriumph and praise, the streets so crowded that it was with difficultythat the Maid could make her progress through them, with throngs ofpeople pressing round to kiss her hand, if might be, her greaves, hermailed shoes, her charger, the floating folds of her banner. She hadsaid she would be wounded and so she was, as might be seen, the enviousrent of the arrow showing through the white plates of metal on hershoulder. She had said all should be theirs _de par Dieu:_ and allwas theirs, thanks to our Lord and also to St. Aignan and St. Euvert, patrons of Orleans, and to St. Louis and St. Charlemagne in heaven whohad so great pity of the kingdom of France: and to the Maid onearth, the Heaven-sent deliverer, the spotless virgin, the celestialwarrior--happy he who could reach to kiss it, the point of her mailedshoe. 

Someone says that she rode through all this half-delirious joy likea creature in a dream, --fatigue, pain, the happy languor of the endattained, and also the profound pity that was the very inspiration ofher spirit, for all those souls of men gone to their account withouthelp of Church or comfort of priest--overwhelming her. But next day, which was Sunday, she was up again and eagerly watching all that wenton. A strange sight was Orleans on that Sunday of May. On the southside of the Loire, all those half-ruined bastilles smoking and silenced, which once had threatened not the city only but all the south of France;on the north the remaining bands of English drawn up in order of battle. The excitement of the town and of the generals in it, was intense; wornas they were with three days of continuous fighting, should they sallyforth again and meet that compact, silent, doubly defiant army, whichwas more or less fresh and unexhausted? Jeanne's opinion was, No;there had been enough of fighting, and it was Sunday, the holy day; butapparently the French did go out though keeping at a distance, watchingthe enemy. By orders of the Maid an altar was raised between the twoarmies in full sight of both sides, and there mass was celebrated, underthe sunshine, by the side of the river which had swallowed Classidasand all his men. French and English together devoutly turned towards andresponded to that Mass in the pause of bewildering uncertainty. "Whichway are their heads turned?" Jeanne asked when it was over. "They areturned away from us, they are turned to Meung, " was the reply. "Then letthem go, _de par Dieu_, " the Maid replied. 

The siege had lasted for seven months, but eight days of the Maid wereenough to bring it to an end. The people of Orleans still, every year, on the 8th of May, make a procession round the town and give thanks toGod for its deliverance. Henceforth, the Maid was known no longer asJeanne d'Arc, the peasant of Domremy, but as _La Pucelle d'Orléans_, inthe same manner in which one might speak of the Prince of Waterloo, orthe Duc de Malakoff. 

 (1) Their special mission seems to have been a demand for the return of a herald previously sent who had never come back. As Dunois accompanied the demand by a threat to kill the English prisoners in Orleans if the herald was not sent back, the request was at once accorded, with fierce defiances to the Maid, the dairy-maid as she is called, bidding her go back to her cows, and threatening to burn her if they caught her. 

 (2) I avail myself here as elsewhere of Mr. Lang's lucid description. "It is really perfectly intelligible. The Council wanted a feint on the left bank, Jeanne an attack on the right. She knew their scheme, untold, but entered into it. There was, however, no feint. She deliberately forced the fighting. There was grand fighting, well worth telling, " adds my martial critic, who understands it so much better than I do, and who I am happy to think is himself telling the tale in another way. 

 (3) She had made this prophecy a month before, and it was recorded three weeks before the event in the Town Book of Brabant. --A. L. 

CHAPTER V -- THE CAMPAIGN OF THE LOIRE. JUNE, JULY, 1429. 

The rescue of Orleans and the defeat of the invincible English were newsto move France from one end to the other, and especially to raise thespirits and restore the courage of that part of France which hadno sympathy with the invaders and to which the English yoke wasunaccustomed and disgraceful. The news flew up and down the Loire frompoint to point, arousing every village, and breathing new heart andencouragement everywhere; while in the meantime Jeanne, partially healedof her wound (on May 9th she rode out in a _maillet_, a light coat ofchain-mail), after a few days' rest in the joyful city which she hadsaved with all its treasures, set out on her return to Chinon. She foundthe King at Loches, another of the strong places on the Loire wherethere was room for a Court, and means of defence for a siege should suchbe necessary, as is the case with so many of these wonderful castlesupon the great French river. Hot with eagerness to follow up her firstgreat success and accomplish her mission, Jeanne's object was to marchon at once with the young Prince, with or without his immense retinue, to Rheims where he should be crowned and anointed King as she hadpromised. Her instinctive sense of the necessities of the position, ifwe use that language--more justly, her boundless faith in the orderswhich she believed had been give her from Heaven, to accomplish thisgreat act without delay, urged her on. She was straitened, if we mayquote the most divine of words, till it should be accomplished. 

But the Maid, flushed with victory, with the shouts of Orleans stillringing in her ears, the applause of her fellow-soldiers, the sound ofthe triumphant bells, was plunged all at once into the indolence, the intrigues, the busy nothingness of the Court, in which whisperingfavourites surrounded a foolish young prince, beguiling him into foolishamusements, alarming him with coward fears. Wise men and buffoons alikedragged him down into that paltry abyss, the one always counsellingcaution, the other inventing amusements. "Let us eat and drink forto-morrow we die. " Was it worth while to lose everything that wasenjoyable in the present moment, to subject a young sovereign to toilsand excitement, and probable loss, for the uncertain advantage of avain ceremony, when he might be enjoying himself safely and at his ease, throughout the summer months, on the cheerful banks of the Loire? On theother hand, the Chancellor, the Chamberlains, the Church, all his graveradvisers (with the exception of Gerson, the great theologian to whomhas been ascribed the authorship of the _Imitation of Christ_, who isreported to have said, "If France deserts her, and she fails, she isnone the less inspired") shook their hands and advised that the wayshould be quite safe and free of danger before the King risked himselfupon it. It was thus that Jeanne was received when, newly alighted fromher charger, her shoulder still but half healed, her eyes scarcely clearof the dust and smoke, she found herself once more in the ante-chamber, wasting the days, waiting in vain behind closed doors, tormented bythe lutes and madrigals, the light women and lighter men, uselessand contemptible, of a foolish Court. The Maid, in all the energyand impulse of a success which had proved all her claims, had also apremonition that her own time was short, if not a direct intimation, assome believe, to that effect: and mingled her remonstrances and appealswith the cry of warning: "I shall only last a year: take the good of meas long as it is possible. "

No doubt she was a very great entertainment to the idle seigneurs andladies who would try to persuade her to tell them what was to happen tothem, she who had prophesied the death of Glasdale and her own wound andso many other things. The Duke of Lorraine on her first setting out hadattempted to discover from Jeanne what course his illness wouldtake, and whether he should get better; and all the demoiselles anddemoiseaux, the flutterers of the ante-chamber, would be still morelikely to surround with their foolish questions the stout-hearted, impatient girl who had acquired a little of the roughness of her soldiercomrades, and had never been slow at any time in answering a foolaccording to his folly; for Jeanne was no meek or sentimental maiden, but a robust and vigorous young woman, ready with a quick response, aswell as with a ready blow did any one touch her unadvisedly, or use anyinappropriate freedom. At last, one day while she waited vainly outsidethe cabinet in which the King was retired with a few of his councillors, Jeanne's patience failed her altogether. She knocked at the door, andbeing admitted threw herself at the feet of the King. To Jeanne hewas no king till he had received the consecration necessary for everysovereign of France. "Noble Dauphin, " she cried, "why should you holdsuch long and tedious councils? Rather come to Rheims and receive yourworthy crown. "

The Bishop of Castres, Christopher de Harcourt, who was present, askedher if she would not now in the presence of the King describe to themthe manner in which her council instructed her, when they talked withher. Jeanne reddened and replied: "I understand that you would like toknow, and I would gladly satisfy you. " "Jeanne, " said the King in histurn, "it would be very good if you could do what they ask, in thepresence of those here. " She answered at once and with great feeling:"When I am vexed to find myself disbelieved in the things I say fromGod, I retire by myself and pray to God, complaining and asking of Himwhy I am not listened to. And when I have prayed I hear a voice whichsays, 'Daughter of God, go, go, go! I will help thee, go!' And whenI hear that voice I feel a great joy. " Her face shone as she spoke, "lifting her eyes to heaven, " like the face of Moses while still it borethe reflection of the glory of God, so that the men were dazzled whosat, speechless, looking on. 

The result was that Charles kindly promised to set out as soon as theroad between him and Rheims should be free of the English, especiallythe towns on the Loire in which a great part of the army dispersed fromOrleans had taken refuge, with the addition of the auxiliary forces ofSir John Fastolfe, a name so much feared by the French, but at which theEnglish reader can scarcely forbear a smile. That the young King did notthink of putting himself at the head of the troops or of taking partin the campaign shows sufficiently that he was indeed a _pauvre sire_, unworthy his gallant people. Jeanne, however, nothing better beingpossible, seems to have accepted this mission with readiness, andinstantly began her preparations to carry it out. It is here that theyoung Seigneur Guy de Laval comes in with his description of her alreadyquoted. He was no humble squire but a great personage to whom the Kingwas civil and pleased to show courtesy. The young man writes to _sesmères_, that is, it seems, his mother and grandmother, to whom, in theirdistant château, anxiously awaiting news of the two youths gone to thewars, their faithful son makes his report of himself and his brother. The King, he says, sent for the Maid, in order, Sir Guy believes, thathe might see her. And afterwards the young man went to Selles where shewas just setting out on the campaign. 

From Selles, he writes on the 8th June, exactly a month after thedeliverance of Orleans:

"I went to her lodging to see her, and she sent for wine and told mewe should soon drink wine in Paris. It was a miraculous thing (_toutedivine_) to see her and hear her. She left Selles on Monday at the hourof vespers for Romorantin, the Marshal de Boussac and a great many armedmen with her. I saw her mount her horse, all in white armour exceptingthe head, a little axe in her hand. The great black charger was veryrestive at her door and would not let her mount. 'Lead him, ' she said, 'to the cross which is in front of the church, ' and there she mounted, the horse standing still as if he had been bound. Then turning towardsthe church which was close by she said in a womanly voice (_assez voixde femme_), 'You priests and people of the Church, make processions andprayers to God for us'; then turning to the road, 'Forward, ' she said. Her unfolded standard was carried by a page; she had her little axe inher hand, and by her side rode a brother who had joined her eightdays before. The Maid told me in her lodging that she had sent you, grandmother, a small gold ring, which was indeed a very small affair, and that she would fain have sent you something better, consideringyour recommendation. To-day M. D'Alençon, the Bastard of Orleans, andGaucourt were to leave Selles, following the Maid. And men are arrivingfrom all parts every day, all with good hope in God who I believe willhelp us. But money there is none at the Court, so that for the present Ihave no hope of any help or assistance. Therefore I desire you, _Madamema mère_, who have my seal, spare not the land neither in sale normortgage . . . . My much honoured ladies and mothers, I pray the blessedSon of God that you have a good life and long; and both of us recommendourselves to our brother Louis. And we send our greetings to the readerof this letter. Written from Selles, Wednesday, 8th June, 1429. Thisafternoon are arrived M. De Vendôme, M. De Boussac, and others, and LaHire has joined the army, and we shall soon be at work (_on besognerabientôt_)--May God grant that it should be according to your desire. "

It was with difficulty that the Duc d'Alençon had been got to start, hiswife consenting with great reluctance. He had been long a prisoner inEngland, and had lately been ransomed for a great sum of money; "Wasnot that a sufficient sacrifice?" the Duchess asked indignantly. To riskonce more a husband so costly was naturally a painful thing to do, andwhy could not Jeanne be content and stay where she was? Jeanne comfortedthe lady, perhaps with a little good-humoured contempt. "Fear nothing, Madame, " she said; "I will bring him back to you safe and sound. "Probably Alençon himself had no great desire to be second in command tothis country lass, even though she had delivered Orleans; and if heset out at all he would have preferred to take another direction and toprotect his own property and province. The gathering of the army thusbecomes visible to us; parties are continually coming in; and no doubt, as they marched along, many a little château--and they abound throughthe country each with its attendant hamlet--gave forth its master orheir, poor but noble, followed by as many men-at-arms, perhaps only twoor three, as the little property could raise, to swell the forces withthe best and surest of material, the trained gentlemen with hearts fullof chivalry and pride, but with the same hardy, self-denying habits asthe sturdy peasants who followed them, ready for any privation; with aproud delight to hear that _on besognera bientôt_--with that St. Michaelat their head, and no longer any fear of the English in their hearts. 

The first _besogne_ on which this army entered was the siege of Jargeau, June 11th, into which town Suffolk had thrown himself and his troopswhen the siege of Orleans was raised. The town was strong and so was thegarrison, experienced too in all the arts of war, and already aware ofthe wild enthusiasm by which Jeanne was surrounded. She passed throughOrleans on the 10th of June, and had there been joined by various newdetachments. The number of her army was now raised, we are told, totwelve hundred lances, which means, as each "lance" was a separateparty, about three thousand six hundred men, though the _Journal duSiège_ gives a much larger number; at all events it was a small armywith which to decide a quarrel between the two greatest nations ofChristendom. Her associates in command were here once more seized by theprevailing sin of hesitation, and many arguments were used to induce herto postpone the assault. It would seem that this hesitation continueduntil the very moment of attack, and was only put an end to when Jeanneherself impatiently seized her banner from the hand of her squire, andplanting herself at the foot of the walls let loose the fervour of thetroops and cheered them on to the irresistible rush in which lay theirstrength. For it was with the commanders, not with the followers, thatthe weakness lay. The Maid herself was struck on the head by a stonefrom the battlements which threw her down; but she sprang up again in amoment unhurt. "_Sus! Sus!_ Our Lord has condemned the English--all isyours!" she cried. She would seem to have stood there in her placewith her banner, a rallying-point and centre in the midst of all theconfusion of the fight, taking this for her part in it, and though sheis always in the thick of the combat, never, so far as we are told, striking a blow, exposed to all the instruments of war, but injuredby none. The effect of her mere attitude, the steadiness of her stand, under the terrible rain of stone bullets and dreadful arrows, must ofitself have been indescribable. 

In the midst of the fiery struggle, there is almost a comic point inher watch over Alençon, for whose safety she had pledged herself, nowdragging him from a dangerous spot with a cry of warning, now pushinghim forward with an encouraging word. On the first of these occasionsa gentleman of Anjou, M. De Lude, who took his place in the front waskilled, which seems hard upon the poor gentleman, who was probably quiteas well worth caring for as Alençon. "_Avant, gentil duc_, " she cried atanother moment, "forward! Are you afraid? you know I promised your wifeto bring you safe home. " Thus her voice keeps ringing through the din, her white armour gleams. "_Sus! Sus!_" the bold cry is almost audible, sibilant, whistling amid the whistling of the arrows. 

Suffolk, the English Bayard, the most chivalrous of knights, was at lastforced to yield. One story tells us that he would give up his sword onlyto Jeanne herself, (1) but there is a more authentic description of hisselection of one youth among his assailants whom the quick perceptionsof the leader had singled out. "Are you noble?" Suffolk asks inthe brevity of such a crisis. "Yes; Guillame Regnault, gentleman ofAuvergne. " "Are you a knight?" "Not yet. " The victor put a knee to theground before his captive, the vanquished touched him lightly on theshoulder with the sword which he then gave over to him. Suffolk wasalways the finest gentleman, the most perfect gentle knight of his time. 

"Now let us go and see the English of Meung, " cried Jeanne, unwearying, as soon as this victory was assured. That place fell easily; itis called the bridge of Meung, in the Chronicle, without furtherdescription, therefore presumably the fortress was not attacked--andthey proceeded onward to Beaugency. These towns still shine over theplain, along the line of the Loire, visible as far as the eye willcarry over the long levels, the great stream linking one to another likepearls on a thread. There is nothing in the landscape now to give even amoment's shelter to the progress of a marching army which must have beenseen from afar, wherever it moved; or to veil the shining battlements, and piled up citadels rising here and there, concentrated points andcentres of life. The great white Castle of Blois, the darker tower ofBeaugency, still stand where they stood when Jeanne and her men drewnear, as conspicuous in their elevation of walls and towers as if theyhad been planted on a mountain top. On more than one occasion duringthis wonderful progress from victory to victory, the triumphant leadersreturned for a day or two to Orleans to tell their good tidings, and tocelebrate their success. 

And there is but one voice as to the military skill which she displayedin these repeated operations. The reader sees her, with her banner, posted in the middle of the fight, guiding her men with a sort ofinfallible instinct which adds force to her absolute quick perception ofevery difficulty and advantage, the unhesitating promptitude, attendinglike so many servants upon the inspiration which is the soul of all. These are things to which a writer ignorant of war is quite unable todo justice. What was almost more wonderful still was the manner in whichthe Maid held her place among the captains, most of whom would havethwarted her if they could, with a consciousness of her own superiorplace, in which there is never the slightest token of presumption orself-esteem. She guarded and guided Alençon with a good-natured andaffectionate disdain; and when there was risk of a great quarrel anda splitting of forces she held the balance like an old and experiencedguide of men. 

This latter crisis occurred before Beaugency on the 15th of June, whenthe Comte de Richemont, Constable of France, the brother of the Duc deBretagne, a great nobleman and famous leader, but in disgrace with theKing and exiled from the Court, suddenly appeared with a considerablearmy to join himself to the royalist forces, probably with the hope ofsecuring the leading place. Richemont was no friend to Jeanne; though heapparently asked her help and influence to reconcile him with the King. He seems indeed to have thought it a disgrace to France that her troopsshould be led, and victories gained by no properly appointed general, but by a woman, probably a witch, a creature unworthy to stand beforearmed men. It must not be forgotten that even now this was the generalopinion of her out of the range of her immediate influence. The Englishheld it like a religion. Bedford, in his description of the siege ofOrleans and its total failure, reports to England that the discomfitureof the hitherto always triumphant army was "caused in great part by thefatal faith and vain fear that the French had, of a disciple and servantof the enemy of man, called the Maid, who uses many false enchantments, and witchcraft, by which not only is the number of our soldiersdiminished but their courage marvellously beaten down, and the boldnessof our enemies increased. " Richemont was a sworn enemy of all such. "Never man hated more, all heresies, sorcerers, and sorceresses, thanhe; for he burned more in France, in Poitou, and Bretagne, than anyother of his time. " The French generals were divided as to the meritsof Richemont and the advantages to be derived from his support. Alençon, the nominal commander, declared that he would leave the armyif Richemont were permitted to join it. The letters of the King wereequally hostile to him; but on the other hand there were some who heldthat the accession of the Constable was of more importance than allthe Maids in France. It was a moment which demanded very wary guidance. Jeanne, it would seem, did not regard his arrival with much pleasure;probably even the increase of her forces did not please her as it wouldhave pleased most commanders, holding so strongly as she did, to themiraculous character of her own mission and that it was not so much thestrength of her troops as the help of God that got her the victory. Butit was not her part to reject or alienate any champion of France. Wehave an account of their meeting given by a retainer of Richemont, which is picturesque enough. "The Maid alighted from her horse, and theConstable also. 'Jeanne, ' he said, 'they tell me that you are againstme. I know not if you are from God (_de la part de Dieu_) or not. Ifyou are from God I do not fear you; if you are of the devil, I fear youstill less. ' 'Brave Constable, ' said Jeanne, 'you have not come here byany will of mine; but since you are here you are welcome. '"

Armed neutrality but suspicion on one side, dignified indifference butacceptance on the other, could not be better shown. 

These successes, however, had been attended by various _escarmouches_going on behind. The English, who had been driven out of one town afteranother, had now drawn together under the command of Talbot, and a partyof troops under Fastolfe, who came to relieve them, had turned back asJeanne proceeded, making various unsuccessful attempts to recover whathad been lost. Failing in all their efforts they returned across thecountry to Genville, and were continuing their retreat to Paris when thetwo enemies came within reach of each other. An encounter in open fieldwas a new experience of which Jeanne as yet had known nothing. She hadbeen successful in assault, in the operations of the siege, but to meetthe enemy hand to hand in battle was what she had never been required todo; and every tradition, every experience, was in favour of the English. From Agincourt to the Battle of the Herrings at Rouvray near Orleans, which had taken place in the beginning of the year (a fight so namedbecause the field of battle had been covered with herrings, theconquerors in this case being merely the convoy in charge of provisionsfor the English, which Fastolfe commanded), such a thing had not beenknown as that the French should hold their own, much less attain anyvictory over the invaders. In these circumstances there was much talk offalling back upon the camp near Beaugency and of retreating or avoidingan engagement; anything rather than hazard one of those encounters whichhad infallibly ended in disaster. But Jeanne was of the same mind asalways, to go forward and fear nothing. "Fall upon them! Go at themboldly, " she cried. "If they were in the clouds we should have them. Thegentle King will now gain the greatest victory he has ever had. "

It is curious to hear that in that great plain of the Beauce, so flat, so fertile, with nothing but vines and cornfields now against thehorizon, the two armies at last almost stumbled upon each other byaccident, in the midst of the brushwood by which the country was wildlyovergrown. The story is that a stag roused by the French scouts rushedinto the midst of the English, who were advantageously placed amongthe brushwood to arrest the enemy on their march; the wild creatureterrified and flying before an army blundered into the midst of theothers, was fired at and thus betrayed the vicinity of the foe. TheEnglish had no time to form or set up their usual defences. They were sotaken by surprise that the rush of the French came without warning, witha suddenness which gave it double force. La Hire made the first attackas leader of the van, and there was thus emulation between the twoparties, which should be first upon the enemy. When Alençon asked Jeannewhat was to be the issue of the fight, she said calmly, "Have you goodspurs?" "What! You mean we shall turn our backs on our enemies?" criedher questioner. "Not so, " she replied. "The English will not fight, they will fly, and you will want good spurs to pursue them. " Even thissomewhat fantastic prophecy put heart into the men, who up to this timehad been wont to fly and not to fight. 

And this was what happened, strange as it may seem. Talbot himself waswith the English forces, and many a gallant captain beside: but themen and their leaders were alike broken in spirit and filled withsuperstitious terrors. Whether these were the forces of hell or those ofheaven that came against them no one could be sure; but it was a powerbeyond that of earth. The dazzled eyes which seemed to see flightsof white butterflies fluttering about the standard of the Maid, couldscarcely belong to one who thought her a servant of the enemy of men. But she was a pernicious witch to Talbot, and strangely enough toRichemont also, who was on her own side. The English force was throwninto confusion, partly, we may suppose, from the broken ground on whichthey were discovered, the undergrowth of the wood which hid both armiesfrom each other. But soon that disorder turned into the wildest panicand flight. It would almost seem as if between these two hereditaryopponents one must always be forced into this miserable part. Not allthe chivalry of France had been able to prevent it at the long string ofbattles in which they were, before the revelation of the Maid; and notthe desperate and furious valour of Talbot could preserve his Englishforce from the infection now. Fastolfe, with the philosophy of an oldsoldier, deciding that it was vain to risk his men when the fieldwas already lost, rode off with all his band. Talbot fought withdesperation, half mad with rage to be thus a second time overcome by sounlikely an adversary, and finally was taken prisoner; while the wholeforce behind him fled and were killed in their flight, the plain beingscattered with their dead bodies. 

Jeanne herself made use of those spurs concerning which she hadenquired, and carried away by the passion of battle, followed in thepursuit, we are told, until she met a Frenchman brutally ill-usinga prisoner whom he had taken, upon which the Maid, indignant, flungherself from her horse, and, seating herself on the ground beside theunfortunate Englishman, took his bleeding head upon her lap and, sendingfor a priest, made his departure from life at least as easy as pity andspiritual consolation could make it on such a disastrous field. In allthe records there is no mention of any actual fighting on her part. She stands in the thick of the flying arrows with her banner, exposingherself to every danger; in moments of alarm, when her forces seemflagging, she seizes and places a ladder against the wall for anassault, and climbs the first as some say; but we never see her strikea blow. On the banks of the Loire the fate of the mail-clad Glasdale, hopeless in the strong stream underneath the ruined bridge, broughttears to her eyes, and now all the excitement of the pursuit vanishedin an instant from her mind, when she saw the English man-at-arms dyingwithout the succour of the Church. Pity was always in her heart; she wasever on the side of the angels, though an angel of war and not of peace. 

It is perhaps because the numbers engaged were so few that this flightor "Chasse de Patay, " has not taken a more important place in therecords of French historians. In general it is only by means of Fontenoythat the _amour propre_ of the French nation defends itself against theoverwhelming list of battles in which the English have had the better ofit. But this was probably the most complete victory that has ever beengained over the stubborn enemy whom French tactics are so seldom able totouch; and the conquerors were purely French without any alloy of alienarms, except a few Scots, to help them. The entire campaign on the Loirewas one of triumph for the French arms, and of disaster for the English. They--it is perhaps a point of national pride to admit it frankly--wereas well beaten as heart of Frenchman could desire, beaten not only inthe result, but in the conduct of the campaign, in heart and in courage, in skill and in genius. There is no reason in the world why it shouldnot be admitted. But it was not the French generals, not even Dunois, who secured these victories. It was the young peasant woman, thedauntless Maid, who underneath the white mantle of her inspiration, miraculous indeed, but not so miraculous as this, had already developedthe genius of a soldier, and who in her simplicity, thinking nothingbut of her "voices" and the counsel they gave her, was already the bestgeneral of them all. 

When Talbot stood before the French generals, no less a person thanAlençon himself is reported to have made a remark to him, of thatungenerous kind which we call in feminine language "spiteful, " and whichis not foreign to the habit of that great nation. "You did not thinkthis morning what would have happened to you before sunset, " said theDuc d'Alençon to the prisoner. "It is the fortune of war, " replied theEnglish chief. 

Once more, however it is like a sudden fall from the open air andsunshine when the victorious army and its chiefs turned back to theCourt where the King and his councillors sat idle, waiting for newsof what was being done for them. A battle-field is no fine sight; theexcitement of the conflict, the great end to be served by it, the senseof God's special protection, even the tremendous uproar of the fight, the intoxication of personal action, danger, and success have, we do notdoubt a rapture and passion in them for the moment, which carry the mindaway; but the bravest soldier holds his breath when he remembers theafter scene, the dead and dying, the horrible injuries inflicted, theloss and misery. However, not even the miserable scene of the Chasse dePatay is so painful as the reverse of the dismal picture, the halls ofthe royal habitation where, while men died for him almost within hearingof the fiddling and the dances, the young King trifled away his uselessdays among his idle favourites, and the musicians played, the assemblieswere held, and all went on as in the Tuileries. We feel as if we hadfallen fathoms deep into the meannesses of mankind when we come backfrom the bloodshed and the horror outside, to the King's presencewithin. The troops which had gone out in uncertainty, on an enterprisewhich might well have proved too great for them, had returned in fullflush of triumph, having at last fully broken the spell of the Englishsuperiority--which was the greatest victory that could have beenachieved: besides gaining the substantial advantage of three importanttowns brought back to the King's allegiance--only to find themselves aslittle advanced as before, coming back to the self-same struggle withindolent complaining, indifference, and ingratitude. 

Jeanne had given the signs that had been demanded from her. She haddelivered Orleans, she cleared the King's road toward the north. Shehad filled the French forces with an enthusiasm and transport of valourwhich swept away all the traditions of ill fortune. From every point ofview the instant march upon Rheims and the accomplishment of the greatobject of her mission had not only become practicable, but was thewisest and most prudent thing to do. 

But this was not the opinion of the Chancellor of France, the Archbishopof Rheims, and La Tremouille, or of the indolent young King himself, whowas very willing to rejoice in the relief from all immediate danger, therestoration of the surrounding country, and even the victory itself, if only they would have left him in quiet where he was, sufficientlycomfortable, amused, and happy, without forcing necessary dangers. Jeanne's successes and her unseasonable zeal and the commotion that sheand her train of captains made, pouring in, in all the excitementof their triumph, into the midst of the madrigals--seem to have beenanything but welcome. Go to Rheims to be crowned? yes, some time whenit was convenient, when it was safe. But in the meantime what was moreimportant was to forbid Richemont, whom the Chancellor hated and theKing did not love, to come into the presence or to have any share eitherin warfare or in pageant. This was not only in itself an extremelyfoolish thing to do, which is always a recommendation, but it was at thesame time an excuse for wasting a little precious time. When this wasat last accomplished, and Richemont, though deeply wounded and offended, proved himself so much a man of honour and a patriot, that thoughdismissed by the King he still upheld, if languidly, his cause--therewas yet a great deal of resistance to be overcome. Paris though so faroff was thrown into great excitement and alarm by the flight at Patay, and the whole city was in commotion fearing an immediate advance andattack. But in Loches, or wherever Charles may have been, it was alltaken very easily. Fastolfe, the fugitive, had his Garter taken fromhim as the greatest disgrace that could be inflicted, for his shamefulflight, about the time when Richemont, one of the victors, was beingsent off and disgraced on the other side for the crime of having helpedto inflict, without the consent of the King, the greatest blow whichhad yet been given to the English domination! So the Court held on itsridiculous and fatal course. 

However the force of public feeling which must have been very franklyexpressed by many important voices was too much for Charles and he wasat length compelled to put himself in motion. The army had assembled atGien, where he joined it, and the great wave of enthusiasm awakened byJeanne, and on which he now moved forth as on the top of the wave, was for the time triumphant. No one dared say now that the Maid wasa sorceress, or that it was by the aid of Beelzebub that she cast outdevils; but a hundred jealousies and hatreds worked against her behindbacks, among the courtiers, among the clergy, strange as that may sound, in sight of the absolute devotion of her mind, and the saintly lifeshe led. So much was this the case still, notwithstanding the practicalproofs she had given of her claims, that even persons of kindred mind, partially sharing her inspirations, such as the famous Brother Richardof Troyes, looked upon her with suspicion and alarm--fearing a delusionof Satan. It is more easy perhaps to understand why the archbishops andbishops should have been inclined against her, since, though perfectlyorthodox and a good Catholic, Jeanne had been independent of allpriestly guidance and had sought no sanction from the Church to hercommission, which she believed to be given by Heaven. "Give God thepraise; but we know that this woman is a sinner. " This was the best theycould find to say of her in the moment of her greatest victories; butindeed it is no disparagement to Jeanne or to any saint that she shouldshare with her Master the opprobrium of such words as these. 

At last however a reluctant start was made. Jeanne with her "people, "her little staff, in which, now, were two of her brothers, a secondhaving joined her after Orleans, left Gien on the 28th of June; and thenext day the King very unwillingly set out. There is given a long listof generals who surrounded and accompanied him, three or four princes ofthe blood, the Bastard of Orleans, the Archbishop of Rheims, marshals, admirals, and innumerable seigneurs, among whom was our young Guy deLaval who wrote the letter to his "mothers" which we have already quotedand whose faith in the Maid we thus know; and our ever faithful La Hire, the big-voiced Gascon who had permission to swear by his _bâton_, thed'Artagnan of this history. We reckon these names as those of friends:Dunois the ever-brave, Alençon the _gentil Duc_ for whom Jeanne hada special and protecting kindness, La Hire the rough captain of FreeLances, and the graceful young seigneur, Sir Guy as we should havecalled him had he been English, who was so ready to sell or mortgage hisland that he might convey his troop befittingly to the wars. This littlegroup brightens the march for us with their friendly faces. We know thatthey have but one thought of the warrior maiden in whose genius they hadbegun to have a wondering confidence as well as in her divine mission. While they were there we feel that she had at least so many whounderstood her, and who bore her the affection of brothers. We are toldthat in the progress of the army Jeanne had no definite place. She rodewhere she pleased, sometimes in the front, sometimes in the rear. Oneimagines with pleasure that wherever her charger passed along the linesit would be accompanied by one or other of those valiant and faithfulcompanions. 

The first place at which a halt was made was Auxerre, a town occupiedchiefly by Burgundians, which closed its gates, but by means of bribes, partly of provisions to be supplied, partly of gifts to La Tremouille, secured itself from the attack which Jeanne longed to lead. Othersmaller strongholds on the road yielded without hesitation. At last theycame to Troyes, a large and strong place, well garrisoned and confidentin its strength, the town distinguished in the history of the timeby the treaty made there, by which the young King had beendisinherited--and by the marriage of Henry of England with the PrincessCatherine of France, in whose right he was to succeed to the throne. It was an ill-omened place for a French king and the camp was torn withdissensions. Should the army march by, taking no notice of it and soget all the sooner to Rheims? or should they pause first, to try theirfortune against those solid walls? But indeed it was not the camp thatdebated this question. The camp was of Jeanne's mind whichever side shetook, and her side was always that of the promptest action. The garrisonmade a bold sortie, the very day of the arrival of Charles and hisforces, but had been beaten back: and the King encamped under the walls, wavering and uncertain whether he might not still depart on the morrow, but sending a repeated summons to surrender, to which no attention waspaid. 

Once more there was a pause of indecision; the King was not bold enougheither to push on and leave the city, or to attack it. Again councils ofwar succeeded each other day after day, discussing the matter over andover, leaving the King each time more doubtful, more timid than before. From these debates Jeanne was anxiously held back, while every silkenfool gave his opinion. At last, one of the councillors was stirred bythis strange anomaly. He declared among them all, that as it was by theadvice of the Maid that the expedition had been undertaken, without heracquiescence it ought not to be abandoned. "When the King set out it wasnot because of the great puissance of the army he then had with him, orthe great treasure he had to provide for them, nor yet because it seemedto him a probable thing to be accomplished; but the said expeditionwas undertaken solely at the suit of the said Jeanne, who urged himconstantly to go forward, to be crowned at Rheims, and that he shouldfind little resistance, for it was the pleasure and will of God. Ifthe said Jeanne is not to be allowed to give her advice now, it is myopinion that we should turn back, " said the Seigneur de Treves, who hadnever been a partisan of or believer in Jeanne. We are told that at thisfortunate moment when one of her opponents had thus pronounced in herfavour, Jeanne, impatient and restless, knocked at the door of thecouncil chamber as she had done before in her rustic boldness; and thenthere occurred a brief and characteristic dialogue. 

"Jeanne, " said the Archbishop of Rheims, taking the first word, probablywith the ready instinct of a conspirator to excuse himself fromhaving helped to shut her out, "the King and his council are in greatperplexity to know what they should do. "

"Shall I be believed if I speak?" said the Maid. 

"I cannot tell, " replied the King, interposing; "though if you saythings that are reasonable and profitable, I shall certainly believeyou. "

"Shall I be believed?" she repeated. 

"Yes, " said the King, "according as you speak. "

"Noble Dauphin, " she exclaimed, "order your people to assault the cityof Troyes, to hold no more councils; for, by my God, in three days Iwill introduce you into the town of Troyes, by love or by force, andfalse Burgundy shall be dismayed. "

"Jeanne, " said the Chancellor, "if you could do that in six days, wemight well wait. "

"You shall be master of the place, " said the Maid, addressing herselfsteadily to the King, "not in six days, but to-morrow. "

And then there occurred once more the now habitual scene. It was nolonger the miracle it had been to see her dash forward to her post underthe walls with her standard which was the signal for battle, to whichthe impatient troops responded, confident in her, as she in herself. Butfor the first time we hear how the young general, learning her trade ofwar day by day, made her preparations for the siege. She was a gunnerborn, according to all we hear, and was quick to perceive the advantageof her rude artillery though she had never seen one of these _bouchesde feu_ till she encountered them at Orleans. The whole army was set towork during the night, knights and men-at-arms alike, to raise--with anykind of handy material, palings faggots, tables, even doors and windows, taken it must be feared from some neighbouring village or faubourg--amound on which to place the guns. The country as we have said is asflat as the palm of one's hand. They worked all night under cover ofthe darkness with incredible devotion, while the alarmed townsfolk notknowing what was being done, but no doubt divining something from theunusual commotion, betook themselves to the churches to pray, and beganto ponder whether after all it might not be better to join the Kingwhose armies were led by St. Michael himself in the person of hisrepresentative, than to risk a siege. Once more the spell of the Maidfell on the defenders of the place. It was witchcraft, it was somevile art. They had no heart to man the battlements, to fight like theirbrothers at Orleans and Jargeau in face of all the powers of the evilone: the cry of "_Sus! Sus!_" was like the death-knell in their ears. 

While the soldiers within the walls were thus trembling and drawingback, the bishop and his clergy took the matter in hand; they salliedforth, a long procession attended by half the city, to parley with theKing. It was in the earliest dawn, while yet the peaceful world wasscarcely awake; but the town had been in commotion all night, everyvisionary person in it seeing visions and dreaming dreams, and a panicof superstition and spiritual terror taking the strength out of everyarm. Jeanne was already at her post, a glimmering white figure in thefaint and visionary twilight of the morning, when the gates of the cityswung back before this tremulous procession. The King, however, receivedthe envoys graciously, and readily promised to guarantee all the rightsof Troyes, and to permit the garrison to depart in peace, if the townwas given up to him. We are not told whether the Maid acquiesced in thisarrangement, though it at once secured the fulfilment of her prophecy;but in any case she would seem to have been suspicious of the good faithof the departing garrison. Instead of retiring to her tent she tookher place at the gate, watchful, to see the enemy march forth. Andher suspicion was not without reason. The allied troops, English andBurgundian, poured forth from the city gates, crestfallen, unwilling tolook the way of the white witch, who might for aught they knew lay themunder some dreadful spell, even in the moment of passing. But in themidst of them came a darker band, the French prisoners whom they hadpreviously taken, who were as a sort of funded capital in their hands, each man worth so much money as a ransom, It was for this that Jeannehad prepared herself. "_En nom Dieu_, " she cried, "they shall notbe carried away. " The march was stopped, the alarm given, the Kingunwillingly aroused once more from his slumbers. Charles must have beendisturbed at the most untimely hour by the ambassadors from the town, and it mattered little to his supreme indolence and indifference whatmight happen to his unfortunate lieges; but he was forced to bestirhimself, and even to give something from his impoverished exchequerfor the ransom of the prisoners, which must have been more disagreeablestill. The feelings of these men who would have been dragged away incaptivity under the eyes of their victorious countrymen, but for thevigilance of the Maid, may easily be imagined. 

Jeanne seems to have entered the town at once, to prepare for thereception of the King, and to take instant possession of the place, forestalling all further impediment. The people in the streets, however, received her in a very different way from those of Orleans, with troubleand alarm, staring at her as at a dangerous and malignant visitor. TheBrother Richard, before mentioned, the great preacher and reformer, wasthe oracle of Troyes, and held the conscience of the city in his hands. When he suddenly appeared to confront her, every eye was turned uponthem. But the friar himself was in no less doubt than his disciples; heapproached her dubiously, crossing himself, making the sacred sign inthe air, and sprinkling a shower of holy water before him to drive awaythe demon, if demon there was. Jeanne was not unused to support therudest accost, and her frank voice, still _assez femme_, made itselfheard over every clamour. "Come on, I shall not fly away, " she cried, with, one hopes, a laugh of confident innocence and good-humour, in faceof those significant gestures and the terrified looks of all about her. French art has been unkind to Jeanne, occupying itself very little abouther till recently; but her short career is full of pictures. Here thesimple page grows bright with the ancient houses and highly colouredcrowd: the frightened and eager faces at every window, the white warriorin the midst, sending forth a thousand rays from the polished steeland silver of breastplate and helmet: and the brown Franciscan monkadvancing amid a shower of water drops, a mysterious repetition ofsigns. It gives us an extraordinary epitome of the history of France atthat period to turn from this scene to the wild enthusiasm of Orleans, its crowd of people thronging about her, its shouts rending the air;while Troyes was full of terror, doubt, and ill-will, though its nearestneighbour, so to speak, the next town, and so short a distance away. 

A little later in the same day, the next after the surrender, Jeanne, riding with her standard by the side of the King, conducted him to thecathedral where he confirmed his previous promises and received thehomage of the town. It was a beautiful sight, the chronicle tells us, tosee all these magnificent people, so well dressed and well mounted; "_ilferoit très beau voir. _"

The fate of Troyes decided that of Chalons, the only other importanttown on the way, the gates of which were thrown open as Charles and hisarmy, which grew and increased every day, proceeded on its road. Everypromise of the Maid had been so far accomplished, both in the greaterobject and in the details: and now there was nothing between Charles thedisinherited and almost ruined Dauphin of three months ago, trying toforget himself in the seclusion and the sports of Chinon--and the sacredceremonial which drew with it every tradition and every assurance of anancient and lawful throne. 

Jeanne had her little adventure, personal to herself on the way. Thoughthere were neither posts nor telegraphs in those days, there has alwaysbeen a strange swift current in the air or soil which has conveyed news, in a great national crisis, from one end of the country to the other. Itwas not so great a distance to Domremy on the Meuse from Troyes on theLoire, and it appears that a little group of peasants, bolder than therest, had come forth to hang about the road when the army passed andsee what was so fine a sight, and perhaps to catch a glimpse of their_payse_, their little neighbour, the _commère_ who was godmother toGerard d'Epinal's child, the youthful gossip of his young wife--but whowas now, if all tales were true, a great person, and rode by the sideof the King. They went as far as Chalons to see if perhaps all this weretrue and not a fable; and no doubt stood astonished to see her ride by, to hear all the marvellous tales that were told of her, and to assurethemselves that it was truly Jeanne upon whom, more than upon the King, every eye was bent. This small scene in the midst of so many great oneswould probably have been the most interesting of all had it been toldus at any length. The peasant travellers surrounded her with wistfulquestions, with wonder and admiration. Was she never afraid among allthose risks of war, when the arrows hailed about her and the _bouchesde feu_, the mouths of fire, bellowed and flung forth great stones andbullets upon her? "I fear nothing but treason, " said the victoriousMaid. She knew, though her humble visitors did not, how that base thingskulked at her heels, and infested every path. It must not be forgottenthat this wonderful and victorious campaign, with all its lists of townstaken and armies discomfited, lasted six weeks only, almost every day ofwhich was distinguished by some victory. 

 (1) The former story was written in 1429, by the Greffier of Rochelle. "I will yield me only to her, the most valiant woman in the world. " The Greffier was writing at the moment, but not, of course, as an eyewitness. --A. L. 

CHAPTER VI -- THE CORONATION. JULY 17, 1429. 

The road was now clear, and even the most timid of counsellors could notlonger hold back the most indolent of kings. Jeanne had kept her wordonce more and fulfilled her own prophecy, and a force of enthusiasmand certainty, not to be put down, pressed forward the unwilling Courttowards the great ceremonial of the coronation, to which all exceptthose most chiefly concerned attached so great an importance. Charleswould have hesitated still, and questioned the possibility of resistanceon the part of Rheims, if that city had not sent a deputation ofcitizens with the keys of the town, to meet him. After this it was buta triumphal march into the sacred place, where the great cathedraldominated a swarming, busy, mediæval city. King and Archbishop had adouble triumph, for the priest like the monarch had been shut out fromhis lawful throne, and it was only in the train of the Maid that thisgreat ecclesiastic was able to take possession of his dignities. TheKing alighted with the Archbishop at the Archevêché which is closeto the cathedral, an immense, old palace in which the heads of theexpedition were lodged. There is a magnificent old hall still remainingin which no doubt they all assembled, scarcely able to believe thattheir object was accomplished and that the King of France was actuallyin Rheims, and all the prophecies fulfilled. The Archbishop marchedinto the city in the morning; Charles and his Court, and all his greatseigneurs, and the body of his army, in which there were many fightingmen half armed, and some in their rustic clothes as they had left theirfields to join the King in his march--poured in in the evening, afterthe ecclesiastical procession, filling the town with commotion. Jeannerode beside the King, her banner in her hand. It was July, the vigil ofthe Madeleine, and every church poured forth its crowd to witness theentry, and the populace, half troubled, half glad, gazed its eyes outupon the white warrior at the side of the King. Her father and unclewere there to meet her at the old inn in the Place, which still proudlypreserves the record of the peasant guests: two astonished rustics, no doubt, were thrust forth from some window to watch that incrediblesight--Jacques who would rather have drowned his daughter with his ownhands, than have seen her thus launched among men, gazing stillaghast at the resplendent figure of the chevalière at the head of theprocession. This was very different from what he had thought of when hisvillage respectability was tortured by the idea of his girl among thetroopers, yet probably the rigid peasant had never changed his mind. 

We are told by M. Blaze de Bury of an ancient custom which we do notfind stated elsewhere. A platform was erected, he tells us, outside thechoir of the cathedral to which the King was led the evening before thecoronation, surrounded by his peers, who showed him to the assembledpeople with a traditional proclamation: "Here is your King whom we, peers of France, crown as King and sovereign lord. And if there is asoul here which has any objection to make, let him speak and we willanswer him. And to-morrow he shall be consecrated by the grace of theHoly Spirit if you have nothing to say against it. " The people repliedby cries of "Noël, Noël!" It is not to be supposed that the veto of thepeople of Rheims would have been effectual had they opposed: butthe scene is wonderfully picturesque. No doubt Jeanne too was there, watching over her King, as she seems to have done, like a mother overher child, at this crisis of his affairs. 

That night there was little sleep in Rheims, for everything had to beprepared in haste, the decorations of the cathedral, the provisions forthe ceremonial. Many of the necessary articles were at Saint Denis inthe hands of the English, and the treasury of the cathedral had to beransacked to find the fitting vessels. Fortunately it was rich, morerich probably than it is now, when the commonplace silver of thebeginning of this century has replaced the ancient vials. Through theshort summer night everyone was at work in these preparations; and bythe dawn of day visitors began to flow into the city, great personagesand small, to attend the great ceremonial and to pay their homage. Thegreatest of all was the Duke of Lorraine, he who had consulted Jeanneabout his health, husband of the heiress of that rich principality, andson of Queen Yolande who was no doubt with the Court. All France seemedto pour into the famous town, where so important an act was about tobe accomplished, with money and wine flowing on all hands, and theenthusiasm growing along with the popular excitement and profit. Evengreat London is stirred to its limits, many miles off from the centreof proceedings, by such a great event; how much more the little mediævalcity, in which every one might hope to see something of the pageant, as one shining group after another, with armour blazing in the sun, andsleek horses caracoling, arrived at the great gates of the Archevêché:and lesser parties scarcely less interesting poured in in need oflodging, of equipment and provisions; while every housewife searchedher stores for a piece of brilliant stuff, of old silk or embroidery, tomake her house shine like the rest. 

Early in the morning, a wonderful procession came out of theArchbishop's house. Four splendid peers of France, in full armourwith their banners, rode through the streets to the old Abbey of SaintRemy--the old church which Leo IX. Consecrated, in the eleventh century, on an equally splendid occasion, and which may still be seen to-day--tofetch from its shrine, where it was strictly guarded by the monks, the Sainte Ampoule, the holy and sacred vial in which the oil ofconsecration had been sent to Clovis out of Heaven. These noblemessengers were the "hostages" of this sacred charge, engagingthemselves by an oath never to lose sight of it by night or day, till itwas restored to its appointed guardians. This vow having been made, the Abbot of St. Remy, in his richest robes, appeared surrounded by hismonks, carrying the treasure in his hands; and under a splendidcanopy, blazing in the sunshine with cloth of gold, marched towards thecathedral under the escort of the Knights Hostages, blazing also in theflashes of their armour. This procession was met half-way, before theChurch of St. Denis, by another, that of the Archbishop and his train, to whom the holy oil was solemnly confided, and carried by them to thecathedral, already filled by a dazzled and dazzling crowd. 

The Maid had her occupations this July morning like the rest. We hearnothing of any interview with her father, or with Durand the good unclewho had helped her in the beginning of her career; though it was Durandwho was sent for to the King and questioned as to Jeanne's life in herchildhood and early youth; which we may take as proof that Jacques d'Arcstill stood aloof, _dour_, as a Scotch peasant father might have been, suspicious of his daughter's intimacy with all these fine people, andin no way cured of his objections to the publicity which is little lessthan shame to such rugged folk. And there were his two sons who wouldtake him about, and with whom probably in their easier commonplacehe was more at home than with Jeanne. What the Maid had to do on themorning of the coronation day was something very different from any hometalk with her relations. She who felt herself commissioned not only tolead the armies of France, but to deal with her princes and take part inher councils, occupied the morning in dictating a letter to the Duke ofBurgundy. She had summoned the English by letter three times repeated, to withdraw peaceably from the possessions which by God's will wereFrench. It was with still better reason that she summoned Philip ofBurgundy to renounce his feud with his cousin, and thus to heal thebreach which had torn France in two:

JHESUS, MARIA. 

High and redoubtable Prince, Duke of Burgundy. Jeanne the Maid requireson the part of the King of Heaven, my most just sovereign and Lord (_mondroicturier souverain seigneur_), that the King of France and you makepeace between yourselves, firm, strong and that will endure. Pardon eachother of good heart, entirely, as loyal Christians ought to do, and ifyou desire to fight let it be against the Saracens. Prince of Burgundy, I pray, supplicate, and require, as humbly as may be, fight no longeragainst the holy kingdom of France: withdraw, at once and speedily, your people who are in any strongholds or fortresses of the said holykingdom; and on the part of the gentle King of France, he is ready tomake peace with you, having respect to his honour, and upon your lifethat you never will gain a battle against loyal Frenchmen and that allthose who war against the said holy kingdom of France, war againstthe King Jesus, King of Heaven and of all the world and my just andsovereign Lord. And I pray and require with clasped hands that youfight not, nor make any battle against us, neither your friends nor yoursubjects; but believe always however great in number may be the men youlead against us, that you will never win, and it would be great pityfor the great battle and the blood that would be shed of those who cameagainst us. Three weeks ago I sent you a letter by a herald that youshould be present at the consecration of the King, which to-day, Sunday, the seventeenth of the present month of July, is done in the city ofRheims: to which I have had no answer, nor even any news by the saidherald. To God I commend you, and may He be your guard if it pleasesHim, and I pray God to make good peace. 

Written at the aforesaid Rheims, the seventeenth day of July, 1429. 

When the letter was finished Jeanne put on her armour and prepared forthe great ceremony. We are not told what part she took in it, nor is anymore prominent position assigned to her than among the noble crowdof peers and generals who surrounded the altar, where her placewould naturally be, upon the broad raised platform of the choir, soexcellently adapted for such ceremonies. Her banner we are told wasborne into the cathedral, in order, as she proudly explained afterwards, that having been foremost in the danger it should share the honour. 

But we have no right to suppose that the Maid took the position of thechief actor in the pageant and stood alone by the side of Charles, as the exigencies of the pictorial art have required her to do. When, however, the ceremony was completed, and he had received on his kneesthe anointing which separated him as king from every other class of men, and while the lofty vaults echoed with the cries of Noël! Noël! by whichthe people hailed the completed ceremony, Jeanne could contain herselfno longer. The object was attained for which she had laboured andstruggled, and overcome every opponent. She stepped forward out ofthe brilliant crowd, and threw herself at the feet of the now crownedmonarch, embracing his knees. "Gentle King, " she cried with tears, "nowis the pleasure of God fulfilled--whose will it was that I should raisethe siege of Orleans and lead you to this city of Rheims to receiveyour consecration. Now has He shown that you are true King, and that thekingdom of France truly belongs to you alone. "

Those broken words, her tears, the cry of that profound satisfactionwhich is almost anguish, the "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant departin peace, " which is so suitable to the lips of the old, so poignant fromthose of the young, pierced all hearts. It is added that she asked leaveto withdraw, her work being done, and that all who saw her were filledwith sympathy. It was no doubt the irresistible outburst of a heart toofull; and though that fulness was all joy and triumph, yet there was init a sense of completed work, a rending asunder and tearing away fromlife, the end of a wonderful and triumphant tale. 

There is a considerable controversy as to the precise meaning of thatoutburst of emotion. Did the Maid mean that her work was over, and herdivine mission fulfilled? Was this all that she believed herself to beappointed to do? or did she expect, as she sometimes said, to _bouter_the English out of France altogether? In the one case she ought tohave relinquished her work, and in not doing so she acted without theprotection of God which had hitherto made her invulnerable. In theother, her "voices, " her inspiration, must have failed her, for hercourse of triumph went no farther. It is impossible to decide betweenthese contending theories. She did speak in both senses, sometimesdeclaring that she was to take Paris, sometimes, her intention to_bouter_ the English out of the kingdom. At the same time she betrayed aconstant conviction that her office had limitations and must come to anend. "I will last but a year, " she said to the King and to Alençon. Thetestimony of Dunois seems to be the best we can have on this point. He says in his deposition, made many years after her death: "AlthoughJeanne sometimes talked playfully to amuse people, of things concerningthe war which were not afterwards accomplished, yet when she spokeseriously of the war, and of her own career and her vocation, she neveraffirmed anything but that she was sent to raise the siege of Orleansand to lead the King to Rheims to be crowned. "

If this were so was she wrong in continuing her warfare, and did sheplace herself in the position of one who goes on her own charges, finding the mission from on high unnecessary? Or in the other case didher inspiration fail her, or were the intrigues of Charles and hisCourt sufficient to balk the designs of Heaven? We prefer to thinkthat Jeanne's commission concerned only those two things which sheaccomplished so completely; but that in continuing the war, she actedonly as a well inspired and honourable young soldier might, though nolonger as the direct messenger of God. She had as much right to do soas to return to her distaff or her needle in her native village; butshe became subject to all the ordinary laws of war by so doing, exposedherself to be taken or overthrown like any man-at-arms, and acceptedthat risk. What is certain is, that every intrigue sprang up againafresh on the evening of that brilliant and triumphant ceremonial, andthat from the moment of the accomplishment of her great work the failureof the Maid began. 

These intrigues had been in her way since her very first beginning, ashas been seen. At Orleans, in the very field as well as in the councilchamber and the presence, everything was done to balk her, and to crossher plans, but in vain; she triumphed over every contrivance againsther, and broke through the plots, and overcame the plotters. But afterRheims the combination of dangers became ever greater and greater, andwe may say that no merely human general would have had a chance in faceof the many and bewildering influences of evil. Charles who was himself, at least at this period of his career, sufficiently indolent andunenterprising to have damped the energies of any commander, was, inaddition, surrounded by advisers who had always been impatient andjealous of the interference of Jeanne, and would have cast her off as awitch, or passed her by as an impostor, had that been possible, withoutpermitting her to strike a blow. They had now grudgingly made use ofher, or rather, for this is too much to say, had permitted her actionwhere they had no power to restrain it: but they were as littlefriendly, as malignant in their treatment of the Maid as ever, and morehopeful, now that so much had been done by her means, of being able toshake her off and pursue their fate in their own way. 

The position of Charles crowned King of France with all the traditionalpomp, master of the Orleannais, with fresh bands of supporters coming into swell his army day by day, and Paris itself almost within his reach, was very different from that of the discredited Dauphin at Chinon, whomhalf the world believed to have no right to the crown which his ownmother had signed away from him, and who wasted his idle days in follyto the profit of the greedy councillors who schemed and traffickedwith his enemies, and to the destruction of all his hopes. The strangeapparition of virginal purity, energy, and faith which had taken upand saved him against his will and all his efforts had not ceased for amoment to be hateful to La Tremouille and his party; and Charles--thoughhe seems to have had a certain appreciation of the Maid, and even aliking for her frank and fearless character, apart from any faith inher mission--was far too ready to accept the facts of the moment, andprobably to believe that, after all, his own worth and favour withHeaven had a great deal to do with this dazzling triumph and success:certainly he was not the man to make any stand for his deliverer. Butthat she was an auxiliary too important to be sent away was reluctantlyapparent to them all. To keep her as a sort of tame angel about theCourt in order to be produced when she was wanted, to put heart intothe soldiers and frighten the English as she certainly had the gift ofdoing, no doubt appeared to all as a thing desirable enough. And theydared not let her go "because of the people, " nor, may we believe, would Alençon, Dunois, La Hire, and the rest have tolerated thus theabandonment of their comrade. To dismiss her even at her own word wouldhave been impossible, and it is hard to believe that Jeanne, after thatextraordinary brief career as a triumphant general and leader, couldhave gone back to her father's cottage of the village, though shethought she would fain have done so. If we are to believe that she felther mission to be fulfilled, she was yet mistress of her fate to serveFrance and the King as seemed best. 

And we have no evidence that her "voices" forsook her, or discouragedher. They seem to have changed a little in their burden, they began tomingle a sadder tone in their intimations. It began to be breathed intoher mind though not immediately, that something was to happen to her, some disaster not explained, yet that God was to be with her. Itseems to me that all the circumstances are compatible with a change inJeanne's consciousness, from the moment of the coronation. It mighthave been a grander thing had she retired there and then, her work beingaccomplished as she declared it to be; but it would not have been human. She was still a power, if no longer the direct messenger from Heaven;a general, with much skill and natural aptitude if not the Sent of God;and the ardour of a military career had got into her veins. No doubtshe was much more good for that, now, than for sitting by the side ofIsabeau d'Arc at Domremy, and working even into a piece of embroideryfor the altar, her remembrances and visions of camp and siege and theintoxication of victory. She remained, conscious that she was no longerexactly as of old, to fight not only against the English, but withintimate enemies, far more bitter, whom now she knew, against theordinary fortune of war, and against that which is a thousand timesworse, the hatred and envy, the cruel carelessness, and the malignantschemes of her own countrymen for whom she had fought. 

This, so far as we can judge, appears to be the position of Jeanne inthe second portion of her career; perhaps only dimly apprehended and atmoments, by herself; not much thought of probably by those around her, the wisest of whom had always been sceptical of her divine commission;while the populace never saw any change in her, and believed that at onetime as well as at another the Maid was the Maid, and had victory at hercommand. And no doubt that influence would have endured for some time atleast, and her dauntless rush against every obstacle would have carriedsuccess with it, had she been able to carry out her plans, and flyforth upon Paris as she had done upon Orleans, carrying on the campaignswiftly, promptly, without pause or uncertainty. Bedford himself saidthat Paris "would fall at a blow, " if she came on. It had been hardenough, however, to do that, as we have seen, when she was the only hopeof France and had the fire of the divine enthusiasm in her veins; butit was still more hard now to mould a young King elated with triumph, beginning to feel the crown safe upon his head, and to feel that ifthere was still much to gain, there was now a great deal to be lost. The position was complicated and made more difficult for Jeanne by everyadvantage she had gained. 

In the meantime the secret negotiations, which were always being carriedon under the surface, had come to this point, that Charles had madea private treaty with Philip of Burgundy by which that prince pledgedhimself to give up Paris into the King's hands within fifteen days. This agreement furnished a sufficient pretext for the delay in marchingagainst Paris, delay which was Charles's invariable method, and whichbut for Jeanne's hardihood and determination, had all but crushed theexpedition to Rheims itself. It was never with any will of his or of hisadviser, La Tremouille, that any stronghold was assailed. He would fainhave passed by Troyes, as the reader will remember, he would fain havedelayed going to Rheims; in each case he had been forced to move by theimpetuosity of the Maid. But a treaty which touched the honour of theKing was a different matter. Philip of Burgundy, with whom it was made, seems to have held the key of the position. He was called to Paris byBedford on one side to defend the city against its lawful King; he hadpledged himself on the other to Charles to give it up. He had in hishands, though it is uncertain whether he ever read it, that missive ofthe sorceress, the letter of Jeanne which I have quoted, calling uponhim on the part of God to make peace. What was he to do? There werereasons drawing him to both sides. He was the enemy of Charles onaccount of the murder of his father, and therefore had every interest inkeeping Paris from him; he was angry with the English on account of themarriage of the Duke of Gloucester with Jacqueline of Brabant, whichinterfered with his own rights and safety in Flanders, and thereforemight have served himself by giving up the capital to the King. As forthe appeal of Jeanne, what was the letter of that mad creature to aprince and statesman? The progress of affairs was arrested by thisdouble problem. Jeanne had been the prominent, the only important figurein the history of France for some months past. Now that shining figurewas jostled aside, and the ordinary laws of life, with all the counterchanges of negotiation, the ineffectual comings and goings, the meanerhalf-seen persons, the fierce contending personal interests--in whichthere was no love of either God or man, or any elevated notion ofpatriotism--came again into play. 

Jeanne would seem to have already foreseen and felt this change evenbefore she left Rheims; there is a new tone of sadness in some of herrecorded words; or if not of sadness, at least of consciousness that anend was approaching to all these triumphs and splendours. The followingtale is told in various different versions, as occurring with differentpeople; but the account I give is taken from the lips of Dunois himself, a very competent witness. As the King, after his coronation, wended hisway through the country, receiving submission and joyous welcome fromevery village and little town, it happened that while passing throughthe town of La Ferté, Jeanne rode between the Archbishop of Rheims andDunois. The Archbishop had never been friendly to the Maid, and now itwas clear, watched her with that half satirical, half amused look ofthe wise man, curious and cynical in presence of the incomprehensible, observing her ways and very ready to catch her tripping and to entangleher if possible in her own words. The people thronged the way, full ofenthusiasm, acclaiming the King and shouting their joyful exclamationsof "Noël!" though it does not appear that any part of their devotion wasaddressed to Jeanne herself. "Oh, the good people, " she cried with tearsin her eyes, "how joyful they are to see their noble King! And how happyshould I be to end my days and be buried here among them!" Thepriest unmoved by such an exclamation from so young a mouth attemptedinstantly, like the Jewish doctors with our Lord, to catch her in herwords and draw from her some expression that might be used against her. "Jeanne, " he said, "in what place do you expect to die?" It was a directchallenge to the messenger of Heaven to take upon herself the giftof prophecy. But Jeanne in her simplicity shattered the snare whichprobably she did not even perceive: "When it pleases God, " she said. "Iknow neither the place nor the time. "

It was enough, however, that she should think of death and of thesweetness of it, after her work accomplished, in the very moment ofher height of triumph--to show something of a new leaven working in hervirgin soul. 

One characteristic reward, however, Jeanne did receive. Her father anduncle were lodged at the public cost as benefactors of the kingdom, asmay still be seen by the inscription on the old inn in the great Placeat Rheims; and when Jacques d'Arc left the city he carried with him apatent--better than one of nobility which, however, came to the familylater--of exemption for the villages of Domremy and Greux of alltaxes and tributes; "an exemption maintained and confirmed up to theRevolution, in favour of the said Maid, native of that parish, in whichare her relations. " "In the register of the Exchequer, " says M. Blaze deBury, "at the name of the parish of Greux and Domremy, the place forthe receipt is blank, with these words as explanation: _à cause de laPucelle_, on account of the Maid. " There could not have been a moredelightful reward or one more after her own heart. It would be agraceful act of the France of to-day, which has so warmly revivedthe name and image of her maiden deliverer, to renew so touching adistinction to her native place. 

We are told that Jeanne parted with her father and uncle with tears, longing that she might return with them and go back to her mother whowould rejoice to see her again. This was no doubt quite true, thoughit might be equally true that she could not have gone back. Did notthe father return, a little sullen, grasping the present he had himselfreceived, not sure still that it was not disreputable to have a daughterwho wore coat armour and rode by the side of the King, a positioncertainly not proper for maidens of humble birth? The dazzled peasantsturned their backs upon her while she was thus at the height of glory, and never, so far as appears, saw her face again. 

CHAPTER VII -- THE SECOND PERIOD. 1429-1430. 

The epic so brief, so exciting, so full of wonder had now reached itsclimax. Whatever we may think on the question as to whether Jeanne hadnow reached the limit of her commission, it is at least evident that shehad reached the highest point of her triumph, and that her short day ofglory and success came to an end in the great act which she had alwaysspoken of as her chief object. She had crowned her King; she hadrecovered for him one of the richest of his provinces, and established astrong base for further action on his part. She had taught Frenchmen hownot to fly before the English, and she had filled those stout-heartedEnglish, who for a time had the Frenchmen in their powerful steel-cladgrip, with terror and panic, and taught them how to fly in their turn. This was, from the first, what she had said she was appointed to do, and not one of her promises had been broken. Her career had been a shortone, begun in April, ending in July, one brief continuous course ofglory. But this triumphant career had come to its conclusion. Themessenger of God had done her work; the servant must not desire to begreater than his Lord. There have been heroes in this world whose careerhas continued a glorious and a happy one to the end. Our hearts followthem in their noble career, but when the strain and pain are over theycome into their kingdom and reap their reward the interest fails. Weare glad, very glad, that they should live happy ever after, but theirhappiness does not attract us like their struggle. 

It is different with those whose work and whose motives are not those ofthis world. When they step out of the brilliant lights of triumph intosorrow and suffering, all that is most human in us rises to follow thebleeding feet, our hearts swell with indignation, with sorrow and love, and that instinctive admiration for the noble and pure, which provesthat our birthright too is of Heaven, however we may tarnish or evendeny that highest pedigree. The chivalrous romance of that age wouldhave made of Jeanne d'Arc the heroine of human story. She would have hada noble lover, say our young Guy de Laval, or some other generous andbrilliant Seigneur of France, and after her achievements she would havelaid by her sword, and clothed herself with the beautiful garments ofthe age, and would have grown to be a noble lady in some half regalchateau, to which her name would have given new lustre. The young readerwill probably long that it should be so; he will feel it an injustice, awrong to humanity that so generous a soul should have no reward; it willseem to him almost a personal injury that there should not be a noblechevalier at hand to snatch that devoted Maid out of the danger thatthreatened her, out of the horrible fate that befell her; and we canimagine a generous boy, and enthusiastic girl, ready to gnash theirteeth at the terrible and dishonouring thought that it was by Englishhands that this noble creature was tied to the stake and perished inthe flames. For the last it becomes us(1) to repent, for it was to oureverlasting shame; but not more to us than to France who condemned her, who lifted no finger to help her, who raised not even a cry, a protest, against the cruelty and wrong. But for her fate in itself let us notmourn over-much. Had the Maid become a great and honoured lady shouldnot we all have said as Satan says in the Book of Job: Did Jeanne serveGod for nought? We should say: See what she made by it. Honour and fameand love and happiness. She did nobly, but nobly has she been rewarded. 

But that is not God's way. The highest saint is born to martyrdom. Toserve God for nought is the greatest distinction which He reservesfor His chosen. And this was the fate to which the Maid of France wasconsecrated from the moment she set out upon her mission. She had thesupreme glory of accomplishing that which she believed herself to besent to do, and which I also believe she was sent to do, miraculously, by means undreamed of, and in which no one beforehand could havebelieved. But when that was done a higher consecration awaited her. Shehad to drink of the cup of which our Lord drank, and to be baptised withthe baptism with which He was baptised. It was involved in every stepof the progress that it should be so. And she was herself aware of it, vaguely, at heart, as soon as the object of her mission was attained. What else could have put the thought of dying into the mind of a girl ofeighteen in the midst of the adoring crowd, to whom to see her, to touchher, was a benediction? When she went forth from those gates she wasgoing to her execution, though the end was not to be yet. There wasstill a long struggle before her, lingering and slow, more bitter thandeath, the preface of discouragement, of disappointment, of failure whenshe had most hoped to succeed. 

She was on the threshold of this second period when she rode out ofRheims all brilliant in the summer weather, her banner faded now, but glorious, her shining armour bearing signs of warfare, her endachieved--yet all the while her heart troubled, uncertain, and full ofunrest. And it is impossible not to note that from this time her planswere less defined than before. Up to the coronation she had knownexactly what she meant to do, and in spite of all obstructions had doneit, keeping her genial humour and her patience, steering her simple waythrough all the intrigues of the Court, without bitterness and withoutfear. But now a vague mist seems to fall about the path which was soopen and so clear. Paris! Yes, the best policy, the true generalshipwould have been to march straight upon Paris, to lose no time, to leaveas little leisure as possible to the intriguers to resume their oldplots. So the generals thought as well as Jeanne: but the courtiers werenot of that mind. The weak and foolish notion of falling back upon whatthey had gained, and of contenting themselves with that, was all theythought of; and the un-French, unpatriotic temper of Paris which wantedno native king, but was content with the foreigner, gave them a certainexcuse. We could not even imagine London as being ever, at any time, contented with an alien rule. But Paris evidently was so, and was readyto defend itself to the death against its lawful sovereign. Jeanne hadnever before been brought face to face with such a complication. It hadbeen a straightforward struggle, each man for his own side, up to thistime. But now other things had to be taken into consideration. Herewas no faithful Orleans holding out eager arms to its deliverer, but acrafty, self-seeking city, deaf to patriotism, indifferent to freedom, calculating which was most to its profit--and deciding that thestranger, with Philip of Burgundy at his back, was the safer guide. Thiswas enough of itself to make a simple mind pause in astonishment anddismay. 

There is no evidence that the supernatural leaders who had shaped thecourse of the Maid failed her now. She still heard her "voices. " Shestill held communion with the three saints who, she believed devoutly, came out of Heaven to aid her. The whole question of this supernaturalguidance is one which is of course open to discussion. There are manyin these days who do not believe in it at all, who believe in theexaltation of Jeanne's brain, in the excitement of her nerves, in somestrange complication of bodily conditions, which made her believe shesaw and heard what she did not really see or hear. For our part, weconfess frankly that these explanations are no explanation at all so faras we are concerned; we are far more inclined to believe that theMaid spoke truth, she who never told a lie, she who fulfilled all thepromises she made in the name of her guides, than that those people areright who tell us on their own authority that such interpositions ofHeaven are impossible. Nobody in Jeanne's day doubted that Heaven didinterpose directly in human affairs. The only question was, Was itHeaven in this instance? Was it not rather the evil one? Was it sorceryand witchcraft, or was it the agency of God? The English believed firmlythat it was witchcraft; they could not imagine that it was God, the Godof battles, who had always been on their side, who now took the courageout of their hearts and taught their feet to fly for the first time. Itwas the devil, and the Maid herself was a wicked witch. Neither one sidenor the other believed that it was from Jeanne's excited nerves thatthese great things came. There were plenty of women with excited nervesin France, nerves much more excited than those of Jeanne, who was alwaysreasonable at the height of her inspiration; but to none of them did ithappen to mount the breach, to take the city, to drive the enemy--up tothat moment invincible, --flying from the field. 

But it would seem as if these celestial visitants had no longer a clearand definite message for the Maid. Their words, which she quotes, werenow promises of support, vague warnings of trouble to come. "Fear not, for God will stand by you. " She thought they meant that she would bedelivered in safety as she had been hitherto, her wounds healing, hersacred person preserved from any profane touch. But yet such promiseshave always something enigmatical in them, and it might be, as proved tobe the case, that they meant rather consolation and strength to endurethan deliverance. For the first time the Maid was often sad; she fearednothing, but the shadow was heavy on her heart. Orleans and Rheims hadbeen clear as daylight, her "voices" had said to her "Do this" and shehad done it. Now there was no definite direction. She had to judge forherself what was best, and to walk in darkness, hoping that what she didwas what she was meant to do, but with no longer any certainty. This ofitself was a great change, and one which no doubt she felt to her heart. M. Fabre tells (alone among the biographers of Jeanne) that there weresymptoms of danger to her sound and steady mind, in her words and waysduring the moment of triumph. Her chaplain Pasquerel wrote a letterin her name to the Hussites, against whom the Pope was then sendingcrusades, in which "I, the Maid, " threatened, if they were notconverted, to come against them and give them the alternative of deathor amendment. Quicherat says that to the Count d'Armagnac who hadwritten to her, whether in good faith or bad, to ask which of the threethen existent Popes was the real one, she is reported to have answeredthat she would tell him as soon as the English left her free to do so. But this is a perverted account of what she really did say, and M. Fabreseems to be, like the rest of us, a little confused in his dates: andthe documents themselves on which he builds are not of unquestionedauthority. These, however, would be but small speck upon the sunshineof her perfect humility and sobriety; if indeed they are to be dependedupon as authentic at all. 

The day of Jeanne, her time of glory and success, was but a shortone--Orleans was delivered on the 8th of May, the coronation of Charlestook place on the 17th of July; before the earliest of these datesshe had spent nearly two months in an anxious yet hopeful struggle ofpreparation, before she was permitted to enter upon her career. The timeof her discouragement was longer. It was ten months from the day whenshe rode out of Rheims, the 25th of July, 1429, till the 23d of May, 1430, when she was taken. She had said after the deliverance of Orleansthat she had but a year in which to accomplish her work, and at a laterperiod, Easter, 1430, her "voices" told her that "before the St. Jean"she would be in the power of her enemies. Both these statements cametrue. She rose quickly but fell more slowly, struggling along upon thedownward course, unable to carry out what she would, hampered on everyhand, and not apparently followed with the same fervour as of old. It istrue that the principal cause of all seems to have been the schemes ofthe Court and the indolence of Charles; but all these hindrances hadexisted before, and the King and his treacherous advisers had beenunwillingly dragged every mile of the way, though every step made hadbeen to Charles's advantage. But now though the course is still one ofvictory the Maid no longer seems to be either the chief cause or theimmediate leader. Perhaps this may be partly due to the fact that littlefighting was necessary, town after town yielding to the King, whichreduced the part of Jeanne to that of a spectator; but there is achange of atmosphere and tone which seems to point to something morefundamental than this. The historians are very unwilling to acknowledge, except Michelet who does so without hesitation, that she had herselffixed the term of her commission as ending at Rheims; it is certainthat she said many things which bear this meaning, and every fact ofher after career seems to us to prove it: but it is also true that herconviction wavered, and other sayings indicate a different belief orhope. She did no wrong in following the profession of arms in which shehad made so glorious a beginning; she had many gifts and aptitudes forit of which she was not herself at first aware: but she was no longerthe Envoy of God. Enough had been done to arouse the old spirit ofFrance, to break the spell of the English supremacy; it was right andfitting that France should do the rest for herself. Perhaps Jeanne wasnot herself very clear on this point, and after her first statement ofit, became less assured. It is not necessary that the servant shouldknow the designs of the master. It did not after all affect her. Herbusiness was to serve God to the best of her power, not to take themanagement out of His hands. 

The army went forth joyously upon its way, directing itself towardsParis. There was a pilgrimage to make, such as the Kings of Francewere in the habit of making after their coronation; there were pleasantincidents, the submission of a village, the faint resistance, instantlyovercome, of a small town, to make the early days pleasant. Laon andSoissons both surrendered. Senlis and Beauvais received the King'senvoys with joy. The independent captains of the army made littlecircles about, like parties of pleasure, bringing in another and anotherlittle stronghold to the allegiance of the King. When he turned aside, taking as he passed through, without as yet any serious deflection, theroad rather to the Loire than to Paris, success still attended him. AtChâteau-Thierry resistance was expected to give zest to the movementof the forces, but that too yielded at once as the others had done. The dates are very vague and it seems difficult to find any mode ofreconciling them. Almost all the historians while accusing the King offoolish dilatoriness and confusion of plans give us a description of theundefended state of Paris at the moment, which a sudden stroke on thepart of Charles might have carried with little difficulty, during theabsence of all the chiefs from the city and the great terror of theinhabitants; but a comparison of dates shows that the Duke of Bedfordre-entered Paris with strong reinforcements on the very day on whichCharles left Rheims three days only after his coronation, so that hescarcely seems so much to blame as appears. But the general delay, inefficiency, and hesitation existing at headquarters, naturally lead tomistakes of this kind. 

The great point was that Paris itself was by no means disposed toreceive the King. Strange as it seems to say so Paris was bitterly, fiercely English at that extraordinary moment, a fact which ought to betaken into account as the most important in the whole matter. There wasno answering enthusiasm in the capital of France to form an auxiliaryforce behind its ramparts and encourage the besiegers outside. Thepopulace perhaps might be indifferent: at the best it had no feeling onthe subject; but there was no welcome awaiting the King. During the timeof Bedford's absence the city felt itself to have "no lord"--_ceux deParis avoit grand peur car nul seigneur n' y avoit_. It was believedthat Charles would put all the inhabitants to the sword, and theirdesperation of feeling was rather that which leads to a wild andhopeless defence than to submission. The Duke of Bedford, governing inthe name of the infant Henry VI. Of England, was their seigneur, insteadof their natural sovereign. It is a fact which to us seems scarcelycredible, but it was certainly true. There seems to have been no feelingeven, on the subject, no general shame as of a national betrayal;nothing of the kind. Paris was English, holding by the English kings whohad never lost a certain hold on France, and thinking no shame of itsparty. It was a hostile town, the chief of the English possessions. In the _Journal du Bourgeois de Paris_--who was no _bourgeois_ but adistinguished member of that university which held the Maid and all herways in horror--Jeanne the deliverer, the incarnation of patriotismand of France is spoken of as "a creature in the form of a woman. " Howextraordinary is this evidence of a state of affairs in which it isalmost impossible to believe! Paris is France nowadays to many people, though no doubt this is but a superficial judgment; but in theearly part of the fifteenth century, she was frankly English, notby compulsion even, but by habit and policy. Perhaps the delays, thehesitation, the terrors of Charles and his counsellors are thus renderedmore excusable than by any other explanation. 

In the meantime it is almost impossible to follow the wanderings ofthis vacillating army without a map. If the reader should trace itsmovements, he would see what a stumbling and devious course it took asof a man blundering in the dark. From Rheims to Soissons the way wasclear; then there came a sudden move southward to Château-Thierry fromwhich indeed there was still a straight line to Paris but which stillmore clearly indicated the highroad leading to the Orleannais, thefaithful districts of the Loire. This retrograde movement was not madewithout a great outcry from the generals. Their opinion was that theKing ought to press on to conquer everything while the English forceswere still depressed and discouraged. In their mind this deflectiontowards the south was an abandonment at once of honour and safety. Anunimportant check on the way, however, gave an argument to the leadersof the army, and Charles permitted himself to be dragged back. They thenmade their way by La Ferté-Milon, Crépy, and Daumartin, and on thisroad the English troops which had been led out from Paris by Bedford tointercept them came twice within fighting distance of the French army. The English, as all the French historians are eager to inform us, invariably entrenched themselves in their positions, surrounding theirlines with sharp-pointed posts by which the equally invariable rush ofthe French could be broken. But the French on these occasions were toowise to repeat the impetuous charge which had ruined them at Crécy andAgincourt, and the consequence was that the two forces remained withinsight of each other, with a few skirmishes going on at the flanks, butwithout any serious encounter. 

It will be more satisfactory, however, to copy the following_itineraire_ of Charles's movements from the Chronicle of Percevalde Cagny who was a member of the household of the Duc d'Alençon, andprobably present, certainly at all events bound to have the best andmost correct information. He informs us that the King left Rheims onThursday the 21st of July, and dined, supped, and lay at the Abbey ofSt. Nanuol that night, where were brought to him the keys of the city ofLaon. He then set out on _le voyage à venir devant Paris_. 

"And on Saturday the 23d of the same month the King dined, supped andlay at Soissons, and was there received the most honourably that thechurchmen, burghers and other people of the town were capable of: forthey had all great fear because of the destruction of the town which hadbeen taken by the Burgundians and made to rebel against the King. 

"Friday the 29th day of July the King and his company were all daybefore Château-Thierry in order of battle, hoping that the Duke ofBedford would appear to fight. The place surrendered at the hour ofvespers, and the King lodged there till Monday the first of August. Onthat day the King lay at Monmirail in Brie. 

"Tuesday the 2d of August he passed the night in the town of Provins, and had the best possible reception there, and remained till the Fridayfollowing, the 5th August. Sunday the 7th the King lay at the townof Coulommièrs in Brie. Wednesday the 10th he lay at La Ferté- Milon, Thursday at Crespy in Valois--Friday at Laigny-le-Sec. The followingSaturday the 13th the King held the field near Dammartin-en-Gouelle, forthe whole day looking out for the English: but they came not. 

"On Sunday the 14th August the Maid, the Duc d'Alençon, the Count deVendosme, the Marshals and other captains accompanied by six or seventhousand combatants were at the hour of vespers lodged in the fieldsnear Montépilloy, nearly two leagues from the town of Senlis--TheDuke of Bedford and other English captains with between eight and tenthousand English lying half a league from Senlis between our people andthe said city on a little stream, in a village called Notre Dame de laVictoire. That evening our people skirmished with the English near totheir camp and in this skirmish were people taken on each side, and ofthe English Captain d'Orbec and ten or twelve others, and people woundedon both sides: when night fell each retired to their own quarters. "

The same writer records an appeal in the true tone of chivalry addressedto the English by Jeanne and Alençon desiring them to come out fromtheir entrenchments and fight: and promising to withdraw to a sufficientdistance to permit the enemy to place himself in the open field. TheFrench troops had first "put themselves in the best state of consciencethat could possibly be, hearing mass at an early hour and then tohorse. " But the English would not come out. Jeanne, with her standard inher hand rode up to the English entrenchments, and some one says (not deCagny) struck the posts with her banner, challenging the force withinto come out and fight; while they on their side waved at the French indefiance, a standard copied from that of Jeanne, on which was depicteda distaff and spindle. But neither host approached any nearer. Finally, Charles made his way to Compiègne. 

At Château-Thierry there was concluded an arrangement with Philip ofBurgundy for a truce of fifteen days, before the end of which time theDuke undertook to deliver Paris peaceably to the French. That this wassimply to gain time and that no idea of giving up Paris had ever beenentertained is evident; perhaps Charles was not even deceived. He, nomore than Philip, had any desire to encounter the dangers of such asiege. But he was able at least to silence the clamours of the army andthe representations of the persistent Maid by this truce. To wait forfifteen days and receive the prize without a blow struck, would not thatbe best? The counsellors of the King held thus a strong position, thoughthe delay made the hearts of the warriors sick. 

The figure of Jeanne appears during these marchings andcounter-marchings like that of any other general, pursuing a skilful butnot unusual plan of campaign. That she did well and bravely there can beno doubt, and there is a characteristic touch which we recognise, in thefact that she and all of her company "put themselves in the beststate of conscience that could be, " before they took to horse; but theskirmishes and repulses are such as Alençon himself might have made. "She made much diligence, " the same chronicler tells us, "to reduce andplace many towns in the obedience of the King, " but so did many otherswith like success. We hear no more her vigorous knock at the door of thecouncil chamber if the discussion there was too long or the proceedingstoo secret. Her appearances are those of a general among many othergenerals, no longer with any special certainty in her movements as of aperson inspired. We are reminded of a story told of a previous period, after the fight at Patay, when blazing forth in the indignation of heryouthful purity at the sight of one of the camp followers, a degradedwoman with some soldiers, she struck the wanton with the flat ofher sword, driving her forth from the camp, where was no longer thatchastened army of awed and reverent soldiers making their confession onthe eve of every battle, whom she had led to Orleans. The sword she usedon this occasion, was, it is said, the miraculous sword which had beenfound under the high altar of St. Catharine at Fierbois; but at thetouch of the unclean the maiden brand broke in two. If this was anallegory(2) to show that the work of that weapon was over, and thecommon sword of the soldier enough for the warfare that remained, itcould not be more clearly realised than in the history of this campaign. The only touch of our real Maid in her own distinct person comes tous in a letter written in a field on that same wavering road to Paris, dated as early as the 5th of August and addressed to the good people ofRheims, some of whom had evidently written to her to ask what was themeaning of the delay, and whether she had given up the cause ofthe country. There is a terse determination in its brief, indignantsentences which is a relief to the reader weary of the wavering andpurposeless campaign:

"Dear and good friends, good and loyal Frenchmen of the town of Rheims. Jeanne, the Maid, sends you news of her. It is true that the King hasmade a truce of fifteen days with the Duke of Burgundy, who promisesto render peaceably the city of Paris in that time. Do not, however, besurprised if I enter there sooner, for I like not truces so made, andknow not whether I will keep them, but if I keep them, it will be onlybecause of the honour of the King. "

While Jeanne and her army thus played with the unmoving English, advancing and retiring, attempting every means of drawing them out, theenemy took advantage of one of these seeming withdrawals to march outof their camp suddenly and return to Paris, which all this time hadbeen lying comparatively defenceless, had the French made their attacksooner. At the same time Charles moved on to Compiègne where he gavehimself up to fresh intrigues with Philip of Burgundy, this time for atruce to last till Christmas. The Maid was grievously troubled by thisstep, _moult marrie_, and by the new period of delay and negotiation onwhich the Court had entered. Paris was not given up, nor was there anyappearance that it ever would be, and to all the generals as well as tothe Maid it was very evident that this was the next step to be taken. Some of the leaders wearied with inaction had pushed on to Normandywhere four great fortresses--greatest of all the immense and mysteriousstronghold on the high cliffs of the Seine, that imposing ChâteauGaillard which Richard Cœur-de-lion had built, the ruins of which, whiteand mystic, still dominate, like some Titanic ghost, above the course ofthe river--had yielded to them. So great was the danger of Normandy, themost securely English of all French provinces, that Bedford had againbeen drawn out of Paris to defend it. Here then was another opportunityto seize the capital. But Charles could not be induced to move. He foundmany ways of amusing himself at Compiègne, and the new treaty was beinghatched with Burgundy which gave an excuse for doing nothing. The pausewhich wearied them all out, both captains and soldiers, at last becamemore than flesh and blood could bear. 

Jeanne once more was driven to take the initiative. Already on oneoccasion she had forced the hand of the lingering Court, and resumedthe campaign of her own accord, an impatient movement which had beenperfectly successful. No doubt again the army itself was becomingdemoralised, and showing symptoms of falling to pieces. One day she sentfor Alençon in haste during the absence of the ambassadors at Arras. "_Beau duc_, " she cried, "prepare your troops and the other captains. _En mon Dieu, par mon martin_, (3) I will see Paris nearer than I haveyet seen it. " She had seen the towers from afar as she wandered over thecountry in Charles's lingering train. Her sudden resolution struck likefire upon the impatient band. They set out at once, Alençon and the Maidat the head of their division of the army, and all rejoiced to get tohorse again, to push their way through every obstacle. They started onthe 23d August, nearly a month after the departure from Rheims, a monthentirely lost, though full of events, lost without remedy so far asParis was concerned. At Senlis they made a pause, perhaps to await theKing, who, it was hoped, would have been constrained to follow; thencarrying with them all the forces that could be spared from that town, they spurred on to St. Denis where they arrived on the 27th: St. Denis, the other sacred town of France, the place of the tomb, as Rheims wasthe place of the crown. 

The royalty of France was Jeanne's passion. I do not say the King, whichmight be capable of malinterpretation, but the kings, the monarchy, theanointed of the Lord, by whom France was represented, embodied andmade into a living thing. She had loved Rheims, its associations, its triumphs, the rejoicing of its citizens. These had been theaccompaniments of her own highest victory. She came to St. Denis in adifferent mood, her heart hot with disappointment and the thwarting ofall her plans. From whatever cause it might spring, it was clear thatshe was no longer buoyed up by that certainty which only a little whilebefore had carried her through every danger and over every obstacle. Butto have reached St. Denis at least was something. It was a place doublysacred, consecrated to that royal House for which she would so willinglyhave given her life. And at last she was within sight of Paris, thegreatest prize of all. Up to this time she had known in actual warfarenothing but victory. If her heart for the first time wavered and feared, there was still no certain reason that, _de par Dieu_, she might not winthe day again. 

At St. Denis there was once more a cruel delay. Nearly a fortnightpassed and there was no news of the King. The Maid employed the time inskirmishes and reconnoissances, but does not seem to have ventured onan attack without the sanction of Charles, whom Alençon, finally, goingback on two several occasions, succeeded in setting in motion. Charleshad remained at Compiègne to carry out his treaty with Burgundy, andthe last thing he desired was this attack; but when he could resistno longer he moved on reluctantly to St. Denis, where his arrival washailed with great delight. This was not until the 5th of September, andthe army, wrought up to a high pitch of excitement and expectation, waseager for the fight. "There was no one of whatever condition, who didnot say, 'She will lead the King into Paris, if he will let her, '" saysthe chronicler. 

In the meantime the authorities in Paris were at work, strengthening itsfortifications, frightening the populace with threats of the vengeanceof Charles, persuading every citizen of the danger of submission. 

The _Bourgeois_ tells us that letters came from "les Arminoz, " that is, the party of the King, sealed with the seal of the Duc d'Alençon, andaddressed to the heads of the city guilds and municipality invitingtheir co-operation as Frenchmen. "But, " adds the Parisian, "it was easyto see through their meaning, and an answer was returned that they neednot throw away their paper as no attention was paid to it. " There isno sign at all that any national feeling existed to respond to such anappeal. Paris--its courts of law, Parliaments (salaried by Bedford), University, Church--every department, was English in the first place, Burgundian in the second, dependent on English support and money. Therewas no French party existing. The Maid was to them an evil sorceress, acreature in the form of a woman, exercising the blackest arts. Perhapsthere was even a breath of consciousness in the air that Charles himselfhad no desire for the fall of the city. He had left the Parisiansfull time to make every preparation, he had held back as long as waspossible. His favour was all on the side of his enemies; for his ownforces and their leaders, and especially for the Maid, he had nothingbut discouragement, distrust, and auguries of evil. 

Nevertheless, these oppositions came to an end, and Jeanne, though lessready and eager for the assault, found herself under the walls of Parisat last. 

 (1) "The English, not US, " says Mr. Andrew Lang: and it is pleasant to a Scot to know that this is true. England and Scotland were then twain, and the Scots fought in the ranks of our auld Ally. But for the present age the distinction lasts no longer, and to the writer of an English book on English soil it would be ungenerous to take the advantage. 

 (2) It is taken as a miraculous sign by another chronicler, Jean Chartier, who tells us that when this fact came to the knowledge of the King the sword was given by him to the workmen to be re-founded--"but they could not do it, nor put the pieces together again: which is a great proof (_grant approbation_) that the sword came to her divinely. And it is notorious that since the breaking of that sword, the said Jeanne neither prospered in arms to the profit of the King nor otherwise as she had done before. "

 (3) "It was her oath, " adds the chronicler; no one is quite sure what it means, but Quicherat is of opinion that it was her _baton_, her stick or staff. Perceval de Cagny puts in this exclamation in almost all the speeches of the Maid. It must have struck him as a curious adjuration. Perhaps it explains why La Hire, unable to do without something to swear by, was permitted by Jeanne in their frank and humorous _camaraderie_ to swear by his stick, the same rustic oath. 

CHAPTER VIII -- DEFEAT AND DISCOURAGEMENT. AUTUMN, 1429. 

It was on the 7th September that Jeanne and her immediate followersreached the village of La Chapelle, where they encamped for the night. The next day was the day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, a greatfestival of the Church. It could scarcely be a matter of choice on thepart of so devout a Catholic as Jeanne to take this day of all others, when every church bell was tinkling forth a summons to the faithful, forthe day of assault. In all probability she was not now acting on her ownimpulse but on that of the other generals and nobles. Had she refused, might it not have been alleged against her that after all her impatienceit was she who was the cause of delay? The forces with Jeanne were notvery large, a great proportion of the army remaining with Charles no oneseems to know where, either at St. Denis or at some intermediate spot, possibly to form a reserve force which could be brought up when wanted. The best informed historian only knows that Charles was not with theactive force. But Alençon was at the head of the troops, along withmany other names well known to us, La Hire, and young Guy de Laval, andXantrailles, all mighty men of valour and the devoted friends of Jeanne. There is a something, a mist, an incertitude in the beginning of theassault which was unlike the previous achievements of Jeanne, a certainwant of precaution or knowledge of the difficulties which does notreflect honour upon the generals with her. Absolutely new to warfare asshe was before Orleans she had ridden out at once on her arrivalthere to inspect the fortifications of the besiegers. But probably thecontinual skirmishing of which we are told made this impossible here, so that, though the Maid studied the situation of the town in order tochoose the best point for attack, it was only when already engaged thatthe army discovered a double ditch round the walls, the inner one ofwhich was full of water. By sheer impetuosity the French took the gateof St. Honoré and its "boulevard" or tower, driving its defendersback into the city: but their further progress was arrested by thatdiscovery. It was on this occasion that Jeanne is supposed to haveseized from a Burgundian in the mêlée, a sword, of which she boastedafterwards that it was a good sword capable of good blows, though wehave no certain record that in all her battles she ever gave one blow, or shed blood at all. 

It would seem to have been only after the taking of this gate that thediscovery was made as to the two deep ditches, one dry, the other filledwith water. Jeanne, whose place had always been with her standard atthe immediate foot of the wall, from whence to direct and cheer on hersoldiers, pressed forward to this point of peril, descending into thefirst fosse, and climbing up again on the second, the _dos d'ane_, whichseparated them, where she stood in the midst of a rain of arrows, fullyexposed to all the enraged crowd of archers and gunners on the rampartsabove, testing with her lance the depth of the water. We seem in thestory to see her all alone or with her standard-bearer only by herside making this investigation; but that of course is only a pictorialsuggestion, though it might for a moment be the fact. She remainedthere, however, from two in the afternoon till night, when she wasforced away. The struggle must have raged around while she stood on thedark edge of the ditch probing the muddy water to see where it couldbest be crossed, shouting directions to her men in that voice _assezfemme_, which penetrated the noise of battle, and summoning the activeand desperate enemy overhead. "_Renty! Renty!_" she cried as she haddone at Orleans--"_surrender to the King of France!_"

We hear nothing now of the white armour; it must have been dimmed andworn by much fighting, and the banner torn and glorious with the chancesof the war; but it still waved over her head, and she still stood fast, on the ridge between the two ditches, shouting her summons, cheeringthe men, a spot of light still, amid all the steely glimmering of themail-coats and the dark downpour of that iron rain. Half a hundredwar cries rending the air, shrieks from the walls of "Witch, Devil, Ribaude, " and names still more insulting to her purity, could notsilence that treble shout, the most wonderful, surely, that ever ranthrough such an infernal clamour, so prodigious, the chronicler says, that it was a marvel to hear it. _De par Dieu, Rendez vous, rendez vous, au roy de France_. If as we believe she never struck a blow, the aspectof that wonderful figure becomes more extraordinary still. While theboldest of her companions struggled across to fling themselves and whatbeams and ladders they could drag with them against the wall, she stoodwithout even such shelter as close proximity to it might have given, cheering them on, exposed to every shot. 

The fight was desperate, and though there was no marked success onthe part of the besiegers, yet there seems to have been nothingto discourage them, as the fight raged on. Few were wounded, notwithstanding the noise of the cannons and culverins, "by the graceof God and the good luck of the Maid. " But towards the evening Jeanneherself suddenly swayed and fell, an arrow having pierced her thigh; sheseems, however, to have struggled to her feet again, undismayed, when astill greater misfortune befell: her standard-bearer was hit, first inthe foot, and then, as he raised his visor to pull the arrow from thewound, between his eyes, falling dead at her feet. What happened tothe banner, we are not told; Jeanne most likely herself caught it as itfell. But at this stroke, more dreadful than her own wound, her strengthfailed her, and she crept behind a bush or heap of stones, where shelay, refusing to quit the place. Some say she managed to slide into thedry ditch where there was a little shelter, but resisted all attemptsto carry her away, and some add that while she lay there she employedherself in a vain attempt to throw faggots into the ditch to make itpassable. It is said that she kept calling out to them to persevere, togo on and Paris would be won. She had promised, they say, to sleep thatnight within the conquered city; but this promise comes to us with noseal of authority. Jeanne knew that it had taken her eight days to freeOrleans, and she could scarcely have promised so sudden a success inthe more formidable achievement. But she was at least determined in herconviction that perseverance only was needed. She must have lain forhours on the slope of the outer moat, urging on the troops with suchforce as her dauntless voice could give, repeating again and againthat the place could be taken if they but held on. But when night cameAlençon and some other of the captains overcame her resistance, andthere being clearly no further possibility for the moment, succeededin setting her upon her horse, and conveyed her back to the camp. Whilethey rode with her, supporting her on her charger, she did nothing butrepeat "_Quel dommage!_" Oh, what a misfortune, that the siege of Parisshould fail, all for want of constancy and courage. "If they had butgone on till morning, " she cried, "the inhabitants would have known. "It is evident from this that she must have expected a rising within, andcould not yet believe that no such thing was to be looked for. "_Par monmartin_, the place would have been taken, " she said in the hearing onecannot but feel of the chronicler, who reports so often those homelywords. 

Thus Jeanne was led back after the first day's attack. Her wound was notserious, and she had been repulsed during one of the day's fighting atOrleans without losing courage. But something had changed her spirit aswell as the spirit of the army she led. There is a curious glimpse givenus into her camp at this point, which indeed comes to us through theobservation of an enemy, yet seems to have in it an unmistakable gleamof truth. It comes from one of the parties which had been granted asafe-conduct to carry away the dead of the English and Burgundian side. They tell us, among other circumstances, --such as that the French burnttheir dead, a manifest falsehood, but admirably calculated to make thema horror to their neighbours, --that many in the ranks cursed the Maidwho had promised that they should without any doubt sleep that nightin Paris and plunder the wealthy city. The men with their safe-conductcreeping among the dead, to recover those bodies which had fallen ontheir own side, and furtively to count the fallen on the other--who weredelighted to bring a report that the Maid was no longer the fountainof strength and blessing, but secretly cursed by her own forces--aresinister figures groping their way through the darkness of the Septembernight. 

Next morning, however, her wound being slight, Jeanne was up early andin conference with Alençon, begging him to sound his trumpets and setforth once more. "I shall not budge from here, till Paris is taken, " shesaid. No doubt her spirit was up, and a determination to recover lostground strong in her mind. While the commanders consulted together, there came a band of joyful augury into the camp, the Seigneur ofMontmorency with sixty gentlemen, who had left the party of Burgundyin order to take service under the banner of the Maid. No doubt thisimportant and welcome addition to their number exhilarated the entirecamp, in the commotion of the reveillé, while each man looked to hisweapons, wiping off from breastplate and helmet the heavy dew of theSeptember morning, greeting the new friends and brothers-in-arms who hadcome in, and arranging, with a better knowledge of the ground than thatof yesterday, the mode of attack. Jeanne would not confess that she felther wound, in her eagerness to begin the assault a second time. And allwere in good spirits, the disappointment of the night having blown away, and the determination to do or die being stronger than ever. Were themen-at-arms perhaps less amenable? Were they whispering to each otherthat Jeanne had promised them Paris yesterday, and for the first timehad not kept her word? It would almost require such a fact as this toexplain what follows. For as they began to set out, the whole fieldin movement, there was suddenly seen approaching another party ofcavaliers--perhaps another reinforcement like that of Montmorency? Thisnew band, however, consisted but of two gentlemen and their immediateattendants, the Duc de Bar and the Comte de Clermont, (1) always a birdof evil omen, riding hot from St. Denis with orders from the King. These orders were abrupt and peremptory--to turn back. Jeanne and hercompanions were struck dumb for the moment. To turn back, and Parisat their feet! There must have burst forth a storm of remonstranceand appeal. We cannot tell how long the indignant parley lasted; thehistorians do not enlarge upon the disastrous incident. But at lastthe generals yielded to the orders of the King--Jeanne humiliated, miserable, and almost in despair. We cannot but feel that on no formeroccasion would she have given way so completely; she would have rushedto the King's presence, overwhelmed him with impetuous prayers, extortedsomehow the permission to go on. But Charles was safe at seven miles'distance, and his envoys were imperious and peremptory, like men able toenforce obedience if it were not given. She obeyed at last, recoveringcourage a little in the hope of being able to persuade Charles to changehis mind, and sanction another assault on Paris from the other side, bymeans of a bridge over the Seine towards St. Denis, which Alençon hadconstructed. Next morning it appears that without even asking thatpermission a portion of the army set out very early for this bridge: butthe King had divined their project, and when they reached the riverside the first thing they saw was their bridge in ruins. It had beentreacherously destroyed in the night, not by their enemies, but by theirKing. 

It is natural that the French historians should exhaust themselves inexplanation of this fatal change of policy. Quicherat, who was thefirst to bring to light all the most important records of this period ofhistory, lays the entire blame upon La Tremoïlle, the chief adviser ofCharles. But that Charles himself was at heart equally guilty no onecan doubt. He was a man who proved himself in the end of his career topossess both sense and energy, though tardily developed. It was to himthat Jeanne had given that private sign of the truth of her mission, by which he was overawed and convinced in the first moment of theirintercourse. Within the few months which had elapsed since she appearedat Chinon every thing that was wonderful had been done for him by hermeans. He was then a fugitive pretender, not even very certain of hisown claim, driven into a corner of his lawful dominions, and fullyprepared to abandon even that small standing ground, to fly into Spainor Scotland, and give up the attempt to hold his place as King ofFrance. Now he was the consecrated King, with the holy oil uponhis brows, and the crown of his ancestors on his head, accepted andproclaimed, all France stirring to her old allegiance, new conquestsfalling into his hands every day, and the richest portion of his kingdomsecure under his sway. To check thus peremptorily the career of thedeliverer who had done so much for him, degrading her from her place, throwing more than doubt upon her inspiration, falsifying by forcethe promises which she had made--promises which had never failedbefore, --was a worse and deeper sin on the part of a young man, by rightof his kingly office the very head of knighthood and every chivalrousundertaking, than it could be on the part of an old and subtlediplomatist who had never believed in such wild measures, and allthrough had clogged the steps and endeavoured to neutralise the missionof the warrior Maid. It is very clear, however, that between them it wasthe King and his chamberlain who made this assault upon Paris so evidentand complete a failure. One day's repulse was nothing in a siege. Therehad been one great repulse and several lesser ones at Orleans. Jeanne, even though weakened by her wound, had sprung up that morning full ofconfidence and courage. In no way was the failure to be laid to hercharge. 

But this could never, perhaps, have been explained to the whole bodyof the army, who had believed her word without a doubt and taken hersuccess for granted. If they had been wavering before, which seemspossible--for they must have been, to a considerable extent, new levies, the campaigners of the Loire having accomplished their period of feudalservice, --this sudden downfall must have strengthened every doubt anddamped every enthusiasm. The Maid of whom such wonderful tales had beentold, she who had been the angel of triumph, the irresistible, beforewhom the English fled, and the very walls fell down--was she afterall only a sorceress, as the others called her, a creature whoseincantations had failed after the flash of momentary success? Suchimpressions are too apt to come like clouds over every popularenthusiasm, quenching the light and chilling the heart. 

Jeanne was thus dragged back to St. Denis against her will and everyinstinct of her being, and there ensued three days of passionate debateand discussion. For a moment it appeared as if she would have thrown offthe bonds of loyal obedience and pursued her mission at all hazards. Her"voices, " if they had previously given her uncertain sound, promisingonly the support and succour of God, but no success, now spoke moreplainly and urged the continuance of the siege; and the Maid was torn inpieces between the requirements of her celestial guardians and the forceof authority around her. If she had broken out into open rebellion whowould have followed her? She had never yet done so; when the King wasagainst her she had pleaded or forced an agreement, and received orsnatched a consent from the malevolent chamberlain, as at Jargeau andTroyes. Never yet had she set herself in public opposition to the willof her sovereign. She had submitted to all kinds of tests and trialsrather than this. And to have lain half a day wounded outside Paris andto stand there pleading her cause with her wound still unhealed were notlikely things to strengthen her powers of resistance. "The Voicesbade me remain at St. Denis, " she said afterwards at her trial, "and Idesired to remain; but the seigneurs took me away in spite of myself. IfI had not been wounded I should never have left. " Added to the forceof these circumstances, it was no doubt apparent to all that to resumeoperations after that forced retreat, and the betrayal it gave ofdivided counsels, would be less hopeful than ever. These arguments evenconvinced the bold La Hire, who for his part, being no better than aFree Lance, could move hither and thither as he would; and thus thefirst defeat of the Maid, a disaster involving all the misfortunes thatfollowed in its train, was accomplished. 

Jeanne's last act in St. Denis was one to which perhaps the modernreader gives undue significance, but which certainly must have had acertain melancholy meaning. Before she left, dragged almost a captivein the train of the King, we are told that she laid on the altar of thecathedral the armour she had worn on that evil day before Paris. It wasnot an unusual act for a warrior to do this on his return from the wars. And if she had been about to renounce her mission it would have beeneasily comprehensible. But no such thought was in her mind. Was it amovement of despair, was it with some womanish fancy that the arms inwhich she had suffered defeat should not be borne again?--or was it donein some gleam of higher revelation made to her that defeat, too, was apart of victory, and that not without that bitterness of failure couldthe fame of the soldier of Christ be perfected? I have remarked alreadythat we hear no more of the white armour, inlaid with silver anddazzling like a mirror, in which she had begun her career; perhaps itwas the remains of that panoply of triumph which she laid out before thealtar of the patron saint of France, all dim now with hard work andthe shadow of defeat. It must have marked a renunciation of one kindor another, the sacrifice of some hope. She was no longer Jeanne theinvincible, the triumphant, whose very look made the enemy tremble andflee, and gave double force to every Frenchman's arm. Was she then andthere abdicating, becoming to her own consciousness Jeanne the championonly, honest and true, but no longer the inspired Maid, the Envoy ofGod? To these questions we can give no answer; but the act is pathetic, and fills the mind with suggestions. She who had carried every forcetriumphantly with her, and quenched every opposition, bitter anddetermined though that had been, was now a thrall to be draggedalmost by force in an unworthy train. It is evident that she felt thehumiliation to the bottom of her heart. It is not for human nature tohave the triumph alone: the humiliation, the overthrow, the chill andtragic shadow must follow. Jeanne had entered into that cloud when sheoffered the armour, that had been like a star in front of the battle, at the shrine of St. Denis. (2) Hers was now to be a sadder, a humbler, perhaps a still nobler part. 

It is enough to trace the further movements of the King to perceivehow at every step the iron must have entered deeper and deeper into theheart of the Maid. He made his arrangements for the government of eachof the towns which had acknowledged him: Beauvais, Compiègne, Senlis, and the rest. He appointed commissioners for the due regulation of thetruce with Philip of Burgundy. And then the retreating army took itsmarch southward towards the mild and wealthy country, all fertility andquiet, where a recreant prince might feel himself safe and amuse himselfat his leisure--by Lagny, by Provins, by Bercy-sur Seine, where he hadbeen checked before in his retreat and almost forced to the march onParis--by Sens, and Montargis: until at last on the 29th of September, no doubt diminished by the withdrawal of many a local troop and knightwhose service was over, the forces arrived at Gien, whence they had setforth at the end of June for a series of victories. It is to be supposedthat the King was well enough satisfied with the conquests accomplishedin three months. And, indeed, in ordinary circumstances they would haveformed a triumphant list. Charles must have felt himself free to playafter the work which he had not done; and to leave his good fortune andthe able negotiators, who hoped to get Paris and other good things fromPhilip of Burgundy without paying anything for them, to do the rest. 

We can imagine nothing more dreadful for the Maid than the months thatfollowed. The Court was not ungrateful to her; she received the warmestwelcome from the Queen; she had a _maison_ arranged for her like thehousehold of a noble chief, with the addition of women and maidens ofrank to her existing staff, and everything which could serve to showthat she was one whom the King delighted to honour. And Charles wouldhave her apparelled gloriously like the king's daughter in the psalm. "He gave her a mantle of cloth of gold, open at both sides, to wear overher armour, " and apparently did his best to make her, if not a noblelady, yet into the semblance of a noble young chevalière, one theglories of his Court, with all the distinction of her achievements andall the complacences of a carpet knight. It was said afterwards, in theabsence of any graver possibility of accusation, that she liked her fineclothes. The tears rise to the eyes at such a suggestion. She was sonatural that let us hope she did, the martyr Maid whose torture hadalready begun. If that mantle of gold gave her a moment of pleasure, itis something to be thankful for in the midst of the dismal shadows thatwere already closing round her. They were ready to give her any shiningmantle, any beautiful dress, even a title and a noble name if she would;but what the King and his counsellors were determined on, was, that sheshould no more have the fame of individual triumph, or do anything saveunder their orders. 

Alençon, the gentle duke, with whom she had taken so much trouble, andwho had grown into a true and noble comrade, made one effort to free hisfriend and leader. He planned an expedition into Normandy, where, withthe help of Jeanne, he hoped to inflict upon the English a loss sotremendous, the destruction of their base of operations, that they wouldbe compelled to abandon the centre of France altogether, and leave theway open to Paris and to the recovery of the entire kingdom; but theKing, or La Tremoïlle, as the historians prefer to say, would notpermit Jeanne to accompany him, and this hope came to nothing. Alençondisbanded his troops, everything in the form of an army was brokenup--the short period of feudal service making this inevitable, unlessnew levies were made--and no forces were left under arms except thosebands which formed the body-guard of the King. Nevertheless, therewas plenty of work to be done still, and the breaking up of the Frenchforces encouraged many a little garrison of English partisans, whichwould have yielded naturally and easily to a strong national party. 

In the midst of the winter, however, it seemed appropriate to the Courtto launch forth an expedition against some of the unsubdued towns, perhaps on account of the mortal languishment of Jeanne herself, perhapsfor some other reason of its own. The first necessity was to collect thenecessary forces, and for this reason Jeanne came to Bourges, where shewas lodged in one of the great houses of the city, that of Raynard deBouligny, _conseiller de roi_, and his wife, Marguerite, one of theQueen's ladies. She was there for three weeks collecting her men, and the noble gentlewoman, who was her hostess, was afterwards in theRehabilitation trial, one of the witnesses to the purity of her life. 

From this lady and others we have a clear enough view of what the Maidwas in this second chapter of her history. She spent her time in themost intimate intercourse with Madam Marguerite, sharing even her room, so that nothing could be more complete than the knowledge of her hostessof every detail of her young guest's life. And wonderful as was thedifference between the peasant maiden of Domremy and the most famouswoman in France, the life of Jeanne, the Deliverer of her country, is asthe life of Jeanne, the cottage sempstress, --as simple, as devout, andas pure. She loved to go to church for the early matins, but as it wasnot fit that she should go out alone at that hour, she besought MadameMarguerite to go with her. In the evening she went to the nearestchurch, and there with all her old childish love for the church bells, she had them rung for half an hour, calling together the poor, thebeggars who haunt every Catholic church, the poor friars and bedesmen, the penniless and forlorn from all the neighbourhood. This custom would, no doubt, soon become known, and not only her poor pensioners, but thegeneral crowd would gather to gaze at the Maid as well as to join inher prayers. It was her great pleasure to sing a hymn to the Virgin, probably one of the litanies which the unlearned worshipper loves, with its choruses and constant repetitions, in company with all thoseuntutored voices, in the dimness of the church, while the twilightsank into night, and the twinkling stars of candles on the altar madea radiance in the middle of the gloom. When she had money to give shedivided it, according to the liberal custom of her time, among her poorfellow-worshippers. These evening services were her recreation. Thedays were full of business, of enrolling soldiers, and regulating the"lances, " groups of retainers, headed by their lord, who came to performtheir feudal service. 

The ladies of the town who had the advantage of knowing MadameMarguerite did not fail to avail themselves of this privilege, andthronged to visit her wonderful guest. They brought her their sacredmedals and rosaries to bless, and asked her a hundred questions. Wasshe afraid of being wounded; or was she assured that she would notbe wounded? "No more than others, " she said; and she put away theirreligious ornaments with a smile, bidding Madame Marguerite touch them, or the visitors themselves, which would be just as good as if she didit. She would seem to have been always smiling, friendly, checking witha laugh the adulation of her visitors, many of whom wore medals withher own effigy (if only one had been saved for us!) as there were manybanners made after the pattern of hers. But cheerful as she was, aprevailing tone of sadness now appears to run through her life. Onseveral occasions she spoke to her confessor and chaplain, who attendedher everywhere, of her death. "If it should be my fate to die soon, tellthe King our master on my part to build chapels where prayer may be madeto the Most High for the salvation of the souls of those who shall diein the wars for the defence of the kingdom. " This was the one thing sheseemed anxious for, and it returned again and again to her mind. Herthoughts indeed were heavy enough. Her larger enterprises had beencruelly put a stop to: her companions-in-arms had been dispersed: shehad been separated from her lieutenant Alençon, and from all the friendsbetween whom and herself great mutual confidence had sprung up. Even thecommission which had at last been put in her hands was a trifling oneand led to nothing, bringing the King no nearer to any satisfactory end:and the troops were under command of a new captain whom she scarcelyknew, d'Albert, who was the son-in-law of La Tremoïlle, and probablylittle inclined to be a friend to Jeanne. In these circumstances therewas little of an exhilarating or promising kind. 

Nevertheless as an episode, few things had happened to Jeanne morememorable than the siege of St. Pierre-le-Moutier. The first assaultupon the town was unsuccessful; the retreat had sounded and the troopswere streaming back from the point of attack, when Jean d'Aulon, thefaithful friend and brave gentleman who was at the head of the Maid'smilitary household, being himself wounded in the heel and unable tostand or walk, saw the Maid almost alone before the stronghold, four orfive men only with her. He dragged himself up as well as he could uponhis horse, and hastened towards her, calling out to her to ask what shedid there, and why she did not retire with the rest. She answered him, taking off her helmet to speak, that she would leave only when the placewas taken--and went on shouting for faggots and beams to make abridge across the ditch. It is to be supposed that seeing she paid noattention, nor budged a step from that dangerous point, this brave man, wounded though he was, must have made an effort to rally the retiringbesiegers: but Jeanne seems to have taken no notice of her desertionnor ever to have paused in her shout for planks and gabions. "All to thebridge, " she shouted, "_aux fagots et aux claies tout le monde!_ everyone to the bridge. " "Jeanne, withdraw, withdraw! You are alone, "some one said to her. Bareheaded, her countenance all aglow, the Maidreplied: "I have still with me fifty thousand of my men. " Were thosethe men whom the prophet's servant saw when his eyes were opened and hebeheld the innumerable company of angels that surrounded his master? ButJeanne, rapt in the trance and ecstasy of battle, gave no explanation. "To work, to work!" her clear voice went on, ringing over the startledhead of the good knight who knew war, but not any rapture like this. History itself, awe-stricken, would almost have us believe that alonewith her own hand the Maid took the city, so entirely does every figuredisappear but that one, and the perplexed and terrified spectator vainlyurging her to give up so desperate an attempt. But no doubt the shoutsof a voice so strange to every such scene, the _vox infantile_, theamazing and clear voice, silvery and womanly, _assez femme_, and theefforts of d'Aulon to bring back the retreating troops were successful, and Jeanne once more, triumphantly kept her word. The place was stronglyfortified, well provisioned, and full of people. Therefore the wholenarrative is little less than miraculous, though very little is said ofit. Had they but persevered, as she had said, a few hours longer beforeParis, who could tell that the same result might not have been obtained?

She was not successful, however, with La Charité, which after a siege ofa month's duration still held out, and had to be abandoned. Theselong operations of regular warfare were not in Jeanne's way; andher coadjutor in command, it must be remembered, was in this casecommissioned by her chief enemy. We are told that she was left withoutsupplies, and in the depths of winter, in cold and rain and snow, withevery movement hampered, and the ineffective government ever ready tosend orders of retreat, or to cause bewildering and confusing delays bythe want of every munition of war. Finally, at all events, the Frenchforces withdrew, and again an unsuccessful enterprise was added tothe record of the once victorious Maid. That she went on continuallypromising victory as in her early times, is probably the mere rumourspread by her detractors who were now so many, for there is no realevidence that she did so. Everything rather points to discouragement, uncertainty, and to a silent rage against the coercion which she couldnot overcome. 

 (1) Clermont it was who deserted the Scots at the Battle of the Herrings. 

 (2) Jeanne's arms, offered at St. Denis, were afterwards taken by the English and sent to the King of England (all except the sword with its ornaments of gold) without giving anything to the church in return: "qui est pur sacrilege et manifeste, " says Jean Chartier. 

CHAPTER IX -- COMPIÈGNE. 1430. 

By this time France was once more all in flames: the English andBurgundians had entered and then abandoned Paris--Duke Philip cynicallyleaving that city, which he had promised to give up to Charles, toits own protection, in order to look after his more pressing personalconcerns: while Bedford spread fire and flame about the adjacentcountry, retaking with much slaughter many of the towns which hadopened their gates to the King. Thus while Charles gave no attentionto anything beyond the Loire, and kept his chief champion there, as itwere, on the leash, permitting no return to the most important fieldof operations, almost all that had been gained was again lost upon thebanks of the Seine. This was the state of affairs when Jeanne returnedhumbled and sad from the abandoned siege of La Charité. Her enemy'scounsels had triumphed all round and this was the result. Individualfightings of no particular account and under no efficient organisationwere taking place day by day; here a town stood out heroically, thereanother yielded to the foreign arms; the population were thrown backinto universal misery, the spring fields trampled under foot, thevillages burned, every evil of war in full operation, invasionaggravated by faction, the English always aided by one side of Franceagainst the other, and neither peace nor security anywhere. 

This was the aspect of affairs on one side. On the other appeared astill less satisfactory scene. Charles amusing himself, his counsellors, La Tremoïlle, and the Archbishop of Rheims carrying on fictitiousnegotiations with Burgundy and playing with the Maid who was in theirpower, sending her out to make a show and cast a spell, then draggingher back at the end of their shameful chain: while the Court, the Kingand Queen, and all their flattering attendants gilded that chain andtried to make her forget by fine clothes and caresses, at once hermission and her despair. They were not ungrateful, no: let us do themjustice, for they might well have added this to the number of theirsins: mantles of cloth of gold, patents of nobility were at her command, had these been what she wanted. The only personal wrong they didto Jeanne was to set up against her a sort of opposition, anotherenchantress and visionary who had "voices" and apparitions too, and whowas admitted to all the councils and gave her advice in contradictionof the Maid, a certain Catherine de la Rochelle, who was ready to sayanything that was put into her mouth, but who had done nothing to proveany mission for France or from God. We have little light however uponthe state of affairs in those castles, which one after another were theabode of the Court during this disastrous winter. They were safe enoughon the other side of the Loire in the fat country where the vines stillflourished and the young corn grew. Now and then a band of armed men wassent forth to succour a fighting town in the suffering and strugglingÎle-de-France, always under the conflicting orders of those intrigantsand courtiers: but within the Court, all was gay; "never man, " as roughLa Hire had said on an earlier occasion, "lost his kingdom more gailyor with better grace" than did Charles. Where was La Hire? Where wasDunois?--there is no appearance of these champions anywhere. Alençon hadreturned to his province. Only La Tremoïlle and the Archbishop holdingall the strings in their hands, upsetting all military plans, disgustingevery chief, met and talked and carried on their busy intrigues, andplayed their Sibyl--_Sibylle de carrefour_, says one of the historiansindignantly--against the Maid, who, all discouraged and downcast, fretted by caresses, sick of inactivity, dragged out the uneasy days inan uncongenial world; but Jeanne has left no record of the sensationswith which she saw these days pass, eating her heart out, gazingover that rapid river, on the other side of which all the devils wereunchained and every result of her brief revolution was being lost. 

At length however the impatience and despair were more than she couldbear; the Court was then at Sully and the spring had begun with itslonger days and more passable roads. Without a word to anyone the Maidleft the castle. The war had rolled towards these princely walls, asnear as Melun, which was threatened by the English. A little band ofintimate servants and associates, her two brothers, and a few faithfulfollowers, were with her. So far as we know she never saw Charles or hiscourtiers again. They arrived at Melun in time to witness and to takepart in the repulse of the English, and it was here that a communicationwas make to Jeanne by her saints of which afterwards there was frequentmention. Little had been said of them during her dark time of inaction, and their tone was no longer as of old. It was on the side of the moatof Melun where probably she was superintending some necessary workto strengthen the fortifications or to put them in better order fordefence, that this message reached her. The "Voices" which so often hadurged her to victory and engaged the faith of heaven for her success, had now a word to say, secret and personal to herself. It was that sheshould be taken prisoner; and the date was fixed, before the St. Jean. It was the middle of April when this communication was made and theFeast of St. Jean, as everybody knows, is in the end of June; two monthsonly to work in, to strike another blow for France. The "Voices" badeher not to fear, that God would sustain her. But it would be impossiblenot to be startled by such a sudden intimation in the midst of herreviving plans. The Maid made one terrified prayer, that God would lether die when she was taken, not subject her to long imprisonment; herheart prophetically sprang to a sudden consciousness of the most likely, most terrible end that lay before her, for she had been often enoughthreatened with the stake and the fire to know what to expect. Butthe saintly voices made no reply. They bade her be strong and of goodcourage: is not that the all-sustaining, all-delusive message for everymartyr? It was the will of God, and His support and sustaining power, which we often take to mean deliverance, but which is not alwaysso--were promised. She asked where this terrible thing was to happen, but received no reply. Natural and simple as she was, she confessedafterwards that had she known she was to be taken on any certain day, she would not have gone out to meet the catastrophe unless she hadbeen forced by evident duty to do so. But this was not revealed to her. "Before the St. Jean!" It must almost have seemed a guarantee that untilthat time or near it she was safe. She would seem to have said nothingimmediately of this vision to sadden those about her. 

In the meantime, however, there were other adventures in store for her. From Melun to Lagny was no long journey, but it was through a countryfull of enemies in which she must have been subject to attack at everycorner of every road or field. And she had not been long in the latterplace which is said to have had a garrison of Scots, when news cameof the passing of a band of Burgundians, a troop of raiders indeed, ravaging the country, taking advantage of the war to rob and lay wastechurches, villages, and the growing fields wherever they passed. Thetroops was led by Franquet d'Arras, a famous "_pillard_, " robber of Godand man. Jeanne set out to encounter this bandit with a party of somefour hundred men, and various noble companions, among whom, however, wefind no name familiar in her previous career, a certain Hugh Kennedy, aScot, who is to be met with in various records of fighting, being one ofthe most notable among them. Franquet's band fought vigorously but werecut to pieces, and the leader was taken prisoner. When this man wasbrought back to Lagny, a prisoner to be ransomed, and whom Jeannedesired to exchange for one of her own side, the law laid claim to himas a criminal. He was a prisoner of war: what was it the Maid's duty todo? The question is hotly debated by the historians and it was broughtagainst her at her trial. He was a murderer, a robber, the scourge ofthe country--especially to the poor whom Jeanne protected and cared foreverywhere, was he pitiless and cruel. She gave him up to justice, andhe was tried, condemned, and beheaded. If it was wrong from a militarypoint of view, it was her only error, and shows how little there waswith which to reproach her. 

In Lagny other things passed of a more private nature. Every day and allday long her "voices" repeated their message in her ears. "Before theSt. Jean. " She repeated it to some of her closest comrades but leftherself no time to dwell upon it. Still worse than the giving up ofFranquet was the supposed resuscitation of a child, born dead, whichits parents implored her to pray for that it might live again to bebaptised. She explained the story to her judges afterwards. It wasthe habit of the time, nay, we believe continues to this day in someprimitive places, to lay the dead infant on the altar in such a case, inhope of a miracle. "It is true, " said Jeanne, "that the maidens of thetown were all assembled in the church praying God to restore life thatit might be baptised. It is also true that I went and prayed with them. The child opened its eyes, yawned three or four times, was christenedand died. This is all I know. " The miracle is not one that will findmuch credit nowadays. But the devout custom was at least simple andintelligible enough, though it afforded an excellent occasion toattribute witchcraft to the one among those maidens who was not of Lagnybut of God. 

From Lagny Jeanne went on to various other places in danger, or whichwanted encouragement and help. She made two or three hurried visits toCompiègne, which was threatened by both parties of the enemy; at onetime raising the siege of Choicy, near Compiègne, in company with theArchbishop of Rheims, a strange brother in arms. On another of hervisits to Compiègne there is said to have occurred an incident which, iftrue, reveals to us with very sad reality the trouble that overshadowedthe Maid. She had gone to early mass in the Church of St. Jacques, andcommunicated, as was her custom. It must have been near Easter--perhapsthe occasion of the first communion of some of the children who areso often referred to, among whom she loved to worship. She had retiredbehind a pillar on which she leaned as she stood, and a number ofpeople, among whom were many children, drew near after the service togaze at her. Jeanne's heart was full, and she had no one near to whomshe could open it and relieve her soul. As she stood against the pillarher trouble burst forth. "Dear friends and children, " she said, "I haveto tell you that I have been sold and betrayed, and will soon be givenup to death. I beg of you to pray for me; for soon I shall no longerhave any power to serve the King and the kingdom. " These words were toldto the writer who records them, in the year 1498, by two very old menwho had heard them, being children at the time. The scene was one todwell in a child's recollection, and, if true, it throws a melancholylight upon the thoughts that filled the mind of Jeanne, though heractions may have seemed as energetic and her impulses as strong as inher best days. 

At last the news came speeding through the country that Compiègne wasbeing invested on all sides. It had been the headquarters of Charlesand had received him with acclamations, and therefore the alarm of thetownsfolk for the retribution awaiting them, should they fall into thehands of the enemy, was great; it was besides a very important position. Jeanne was at Crespy en Valois when this news reached her. She set outimmediately (May 22, 1430) to carry aid to the garrison: "_F'irai voirmes bons amis de Compiègne_, " she said. The words are on the base ofher statue which now stands in the Place of that town. Something ofher early impetuosity was in this impulse, and no apparent dread ofany fatality. She rode all night at the head of her party, and arrivedbefore the dawn, a May morning, the 23d, still a month from the fatal"St. Jean. " Though the prophecy was always in her ears, she must havefelt that whole month still before her, with a sensation of almostgreater safety because the dangerous moment was fixed. The town receivedher with joy, and no doubt the satisfaction and relief which hailed herand her reinforcements gave additional fervour to the Maid, and droveout of her mind for a moment the fatal knowledge which oppressed it. There is some difficulty in understanding the events of this day, butthe lucid narrative of Quicherat, which we shall now quote, gives avery vivid picture of it. Jeanne had timed her arrival so early in themorning, probably with the intention of keeping the adversaries in theircamps unaware of so important an addition to the garrison, in order thatshe might surprise them by the sortie she had determined upon; but nodoubt the news had leaked forth somehow, if through no other means, bythe sudden ringing of the bells and sounds of joy from the city. Shepaid her usual visits to the churches, and noted and made all herarrangements for the sortie with her usual care, occupying the longsummer day in these preparations. And it was not till five o'clock inthe evening that everything was complete, and she sallied forth. We hearnothing of the state of the town, or of any suspicion existing at thetime as to the governor Flavy who was afterwards believed by some to bethe man who sold and betrayed her. It is a question debated warmly likeall these questions. He was a man of bad reputation, but there is noevidence that he was a traitor. The incidents are all natural enough, and seem to indicate clearly the mere fortune of war upon which no mancan calculate. We add from Quicherat the description of the field andwhat took place there:

"Compiègne is situated on the left bank of the Oise. On the other sideextends a great meadow, nearly a mile broad, at the end of which therising ground of Picardy rises suddenly like a wall, shutting in thehorizon. The meadow is so low and so subject to floods that it iscrossed by an ancient foot of the low hills. Three village churches markthe extent of the landscape visible from the walls of Compiègne;Margny (sometimes spelt Marigny) at the end of the road; Clairoix threequarters of a league higher up, at the confluence of the two rivers, the Aronde and the Oise, close to the spot where another tributary, theAisne, also flows into the Oise; and Venette a mile and a half lowerdown. The Burgundians had one camp at Margny, another at Clairoix; theheadquarters of the English were at Venette. As for the inhabitantsof Compiègne, their first defence facing the enemy was one of thoseredoubts or towers which the chronicles of the fifteenth century calleda boulevard. It was placed at the end of the bridge and commanded theroad. 

"The plan of the Maid was to make a sortie towards the evening, toattack Margny and afterwards Clairoix, and then at the opening of theAronde valley to meet the Duke of Burgundy and his forces who werelodged there, and who would naturally come to the aid of his othertroops when attacked. She took no thought for the English, havingalready carefully arranged with Flavy how they should be prevented fromcutting off her retreat. The governor provided against any chance ofthis by arming the boulevard strongly with archers to drive off anyadvancing force, and also by keeping ready on the Oise a number ofcovered boats to receive the foot-soldiers in case of a retrogrademovement. 

"The action began well: the garrison of Margny yielded in the twinklingof an eye. That of Clairoix rushing to the support of their brothers inarms was repulsed, then in its turn repulsed the French; and three timesthis alternative of advance and retreat took place on the flat ground ofthe meadow without serious injury to either party. This gave time to theEnglish to take part in the fray;(1) though thanks to the precautions ofFlavy all they could do was to swell the ranks of the Burgundians. But unfortunately the rear of the Maid's army was struck with thepossibility that a diversion might be attempted from behind, and theirretreat cut off. A panic seized them; they broke their ranks, turnedback and fled, some to the boats, some to the barrier of the boulevard. The English witnessing this flight rushed after them, secure now on theside of Compiègne, where the archers no longer ventured to shootlest they should kill the fugitives instead of the enemies. They (theEnglish) thus got possession of the raised road, and pushed on so hotlyafter the fugitives that their horses' heads touched the backs of thecrowd. It thus became necessary for the safety of the town to close thegates until the barrier of the boulevard should be set up again. "

*****

These disastrous accidents had taken place while Jeanne, charging infront with her companions and body-guard, remained quite unaware of anymisfortune. She would hear no call to retreat, even when her companionswere roused to the dangers of their position. "Forward, they are ours!"was all her cry. As at St. Pierre-le-Moutier she was ready to defeat theBurgundian army alone. At length the others perceiving something ofwhat had happened seized her bridle and forced her to retire. She was ofherself too remarkable a figure to be concealed amid the group of armedmen who rode with her, encircling her, defending the rear of the flyingparty. Over her armour she wore a crimson tunic, or according to someauthorities a short cloak, of gorgeous material embroidered with gold, and though by this time the twilight must have afforded a partialshelter, yet the knowledge that she was there gave keenness to everyeye. Behind, the scattered Burgundians had rallied and begun to pursue, while the armour and spears of the English glittered in front betweenthe little party and the barrier which was blocked by a terrified crowdof fugitives. Even then a party of horsemen might have cut their waythrough; but at the moment when Jeanne and her followers drew near, thebarrier was sharply closed and the wild, confused, and fighting crowd, treading each other down, struggling for life, were forced back upon theEnglish lances. Thus the retreating band riding hard along the raisedroad, in order and unbroken, found the path suddenly barred by theforces of the enemy, the fugitives of their own army, and the closedgates of the town. 

An attempt was then made by the Maid and her companions to turn towardsthe western gate where there still might have been a chance of safety;but by this time the smaller figure among all those steel-clad men, andthe waving mantle, must have been distinguished through the dusk and thedust. There was a wild rush of combat and confusion, and in a moment shewas surrounded, seized, her horse and her person, notwithstanding allresistance. With cries of "Rendez vous, " and many an evil name, fiercefaces and threatening weapons closed round her. One of her assailants--aBurgundian knight, a Picard archer, the accounts differ--caught herby her mantle and dragged her from her horse; no Englishman let us bethankful, though no doubt all were equally eager and ready. Into themidst of that shouting mass of men, in the blinding cloud of dust, in the darkening of the night, the Maid of France disappeared for oneterrible moment, and was lost to view. And then, and not till then, camea clamour of bells into the night, and all the steeples of Compiègnetrembled with the call to arms, a sally to save the deliverer. Was ittreachery? Was it only a perception, too late, of the danger? There arenot wanting voices to say that a prompt sally might have saved Jeanne, and that it was quite within the power of the Governor and city had theychosen. Who can answer so dreadful a suggestion? it is too much shameto human nature to believe it. Perhaps within Compiègne as without, theywere too slow to perceive the supreme moment, too much overwhelmed tosnatch any chance of rescue till it was too late. 

Happily we have no light upon the tumult around the prisoner, the uglytriumph, the shouts and exultation of the captors who had seized thesorceress at last; nor upon the thoughts of Jeanne, with her threateneddoom fulfilled and unknown horrors before her, upon which imaginationmust have thrown the most dreadful light, however strongly her couragewas sustained by the promise of succour from on high. She had not beensent upon this mission as of old. No heavenly voice had said to her"Go and deliver Compiègne. " She had undertaken that warfare on her owncharges with no promise to encourage her, only the certainty of beingoverthrown "before the St. Jean. " But the St. Jean was still far off, along month of summer days between her and that moment of fate! So faras we can see Jeanne showed no unseemly weakness in this dark hour. Oneaccount tells us that she held her sword high over her head declaringthat it was given by a higher than any who could claim its surrenderthere. But she neither struggled nor wept. Not a word against herconstancy and courage could any one, then or after, find to say. TheBurgundian chronicler tells us one thing, the French another. "The Maid, easily recognised by her costume of crimson and by the standard whichshe carried in her hand, alone continued to defend herself, " says one;but that we are sure could not have been the case as long as d'Aulon, who accompanied her, was still able to keep on his horse. "She yieldedand gave her parole to Lyonnel, bâtard de Wandomme, " says another; butJeanne herself declares that she gave her faith to no one, reservingto herself the right to escape if she could. In that dark eveningscene nothing is clear except the fact that the Maid was taken, to theexultation and delight of her captors and to the terror and grief of theunhappy town, vainly screaming with all its bells to arms, --and with itssons and champions by hundreds dying under the English lances and in thedark waves of the Oise. 

The archer or whoever it was who secured this prize, took Jeanne back, along the bloody road with its relics of the fight, to Margny, theBurgundian camp, where the leaders crowded together to see so importanta prisoner. "Thither came soon after, " says Monstrelet, "the Duke ofBurgundy from his camp of Coudon, and there assembled the English, thesaid Duke and those of the other camps in great numbers, making, onewith the other, great cries and rejoicings on the taking of the Maid:whom the said Duke went to see in the lodging where she was and spokesome words to her which I cannot call to mind, though I was therepresent; after which the said Duke and the others withdrew for thenight, leaving the Maid in the keeping of Messer John of Luxembourg"--towhom she had been immediately sold by her first captor. The same night, Philip, this noble Duke and Prince of France, wrote a letter to conveythe blessed information:

"The great news of this capture should be spread everywhere and broughtto the knowledge of all, that they may see the error of those who couldbelieve and lend themselves to the pretensions of such a woman. We writethis in the hope of giving you joy, comfort, and consolation, and thatyou may thank God our Creator. Pray that it may be His holy will to bemore and more favourable to the enterprises of our royal master and tothe restoration of his sway over all his good and faithful subjects. "

This royal master was Henry VI. Of England, the baby king, doomedalready to expiate sins that were not his, by the saddest life andreign. The French historians whimsically but perhaps not unnaturally, have the air of putting down this baseness on Philip's part, and on thatof his contemporaries in general, to the score of the English, which ishard measure, seeing that the treachery of a Frenchman could in no waybe attributed to the other nation of which he was the natural enemy, orat least, antagonist. Very naturally the subsequent proceedings in alltheir horror and cruelty are equally put down to the English account, although Frenchmen took, exulted over as a prisoner, tried and condemnedas an enemy of God and the Church, the spotless creature who was Franceincarnate, the very embodiment of her country in all that was purest andnoblest. We shall see with what spontaneous zeal all France, except herown small party, set to work to accomplish this noble office. 

Almost before one could draw breath the University of Paris claimed heras a proper victim for the Inquisition. Compiègne made no sally forher deliverance; Charles, no attempt to ransom her. From end to end ofFrance not a finger was lifted for her rescue; the women wept over her, the poor people still crowded around the prisoner wherever seen, but theFrance of every public document, of every practical power, the livingnation, when it did not utter cries of hatred, kept silence. We inEngland have over and over again acknowledged with shame our guilty partin her murder; but still to this day the Frenchman tries to shieldhis under cover of the English influence and terror. He cannot deny LaTremoïlle, nor Cauchon, nor the University, nor the learned doctorswho did the deed; individually he is ready to give them all up to theeverlasting fires which one cannot but hope are kept alive for somepeople in spite of all modern benevolences; but he skilfully turns backto the English as a moving cause of everything. Nothing can be moreuntrue. The English were not better than the French, but they had theexcuse at least of being the enemy. France saved by a happy chance her_blanches mains_ from the actual blood of the pure and spotless Maid;but with exultation she prepared the victim for the stake, sent herthither, played with her like a cat with a mouse and condemned her tothe fire. This is not to free us from our share: but it is the height ofhypocrisy to lay the blood of Jeanne, entirely to our door. 

Thus Jeanne's inspiration proved itself over again in blood and tears;it had been proved already on battle-field and city wall, with loudtrumpets of joy and victory. But the "voices" had spoken again, soundinganother strain; not always of glory--it is not the way of God; but ofprison, downfall, distress. "Be not astonished at it, " they said toher; "God will be with you. " From day to day they had spoken in the samestrain, with no joyful commands to go forth and conquer, but the onerefrain: "Before the St. Jean. " Perhaps there was a certain relief inher mind at first when the blow fell and the prophecy was accomplished. All she had to do now was to suffer, not to be surprised, to trust inGod that He would support her. To Jeanne, no doubt, in the confidenceand inexperience of her youth, that meant that God would deliver her. And so He did; but not as she expected. The sunshine of her life wasover, and now the long shadow, the bitter storm was to come. 

Nothing could be more remarkable than the response of France in generalto this extraordinary event. In Paris there were bonfires lighted toshow their joy, the _Te Deum_ was sung at Notre Dame. At the CourtCharles and his counsellors amused themselves with another prophet, ashepherd from the hills who was to rival Jeanne's best achievements, butnever did so. Only the towns which she had delivered had still a tenderthought for Jeanne. At Tours the entire population appeared inthe streets with bare feet, singing the _Miserere_ in penance andaffliction. Orleans and Blois made public prayers for her safety. Rheims, in which there was much independent interest in Jeanne and hertruth, had to be specially soothed by a letter from the Archbishop, inwhich he made out with great cleverness that it was the fault of Jeannealone that she was taken. "She did nothing but by her own will, withoutobeying the commandments of God, " he says; "she would hear no counsel, but followed her own pleasure, "; and it is in this letter that we hearof the shepherd lad who was to replace Jeanne, and that it was hisopinion or revelation that God had suffered the Maid to be taken becauseof her growing pride, because she loved fine clothes, and preferred herown will to any guidance. We do not know whether this contented thecity of Rheims; similar reasoning however seems to have silenced France. Nobody uttered a protest, nor struck a blow; the mournful procession ofTours, where she had been first known in the outset of her career, theprayers of Orleans which she had delivered, are the only exceptions weknow of. Otherwise there was lifted in France neither voice nor hand toavert her doom. 

 (1) The three camps must have formed a sort of irregular triangle. The English at Venette being only half a mile from the gates of Compiègne. 

CHAPTER X -- THE CAPTIVE. MAY, 1430-JAN. , 1431. 

We have here to remark a complete suspension of all the ordinary lawsat once of chivalry and of honest warfare. Jeanne had been captured asa general at the head of her forces. She was a prisoner of war. Sucha prisoner ordinarily, even in the most cruel ages, is in nobodily danger. He is worth more alive than dead--a great ransomperhaps--perhaps the very end of the warfare, and the accomplishmentof everything it was intended to gain: at least he is most valuable toexchange for other important prisoners on the opposite side. It was liketaking away so much personal property to kill a prisoner, an outragedeeply resented by his captor and unjustified by any law. It was truethat Jeanne herself had transgressed this universal custom but a littlewhile before, by giving up Franquet d'Arras to his prosecutors. ButFranquet was beyond the courtesies of war, a noted criminal, robber, anddestroyer: yet she ought not perhaps to have departed from the militarylaws of right and wrong while everything in the country was under thehasty arbitration of war. No one, however, so far as we know, producesthis matter of Franquet as a precedent in her own case. From the firstmoment of her seizure there was no question of the custom and privilegeof warfare. She was taken as a wild animal might have been taken, theonly doubt being how to make the most signal example of her. Vengeancein the gloomy form of the Inquisition claimed her the first day. No suchword as ransom was breathed from her own side, none was demanded, nonewas offered. Her case is at once separated from every other. 

Yet the reign of chivalry was at its height, and women were supposed tobe the objects of a kind of worship, every knight being sworn to succourand help them in need and trouble. There was perhaps something of thesubtle jealousy of sex so constantly denied on the stronger side, butyet always existing, in the abrogation of every law of chivalry as wellas of warfare, in respect to the Maid. That man is indeed of the higheststrain of generosity who can bear to be beaten by a woman. And all theseething, agitated world of France had been beaten by this girl. TheEnglish and Burgundians, in the ordinary sense of the word, had beenovercome in fair field, forced to fly before her; the French, her ownside, had experienced an even more penetrating downfall by having thehonours of victory taken from them, she alone winning the day where theyhad all failed. This is bitterer, perhaps, than merely to be compelledto raise a siege or to fail in a fight. The Frenchmen fought like lions, but the praise was to Jeanne who never struck a blow. Such great heartsas Dunois, such a courteous prince as Alençon, were too magnanimous tofeel, or at least to resent, the grievance; they seconded her and foughtunder her with a nobility of mind and disinterestedness beyond praise;but it was not to be supposed that the common mass of the Frenchcaptains were like these; she had wronged and shamed them by taking theglory from them, as much as she had shamed the English by making thoseuniversal victors fly before her. The burghers whom she had rescued, thepoor people who were her brethren and whom she sought everywhere, mightweep and cry out to Heaven, but they were powerless at such a moment. And every law that might have helped her was pushed aside. 

On the 25th the news was known in Paris, and immediately there appearsin the record a new adversary to Jeanne, the most bitter and implacableof all; the next day, May 26, 1430, without the loss of an hour, aletter was addressed to the Burgundian camp from the capital. Quicheratspeaks of it as a letter from the Inquisitor or vicar-general of theInquisition, written by the officials of the University; others tell usthat an independent letter was sent from the University to second thatof the Inquisitor. The University we may add was not a universitylike one of ours, or like any existing at the present day. It was anecclesiastical corporation of the highest authority in every causeconnected with the Church, while gathering law, philosophy, andliterature under its wing. The first theologians, the most eminentjurists were collected there, not by any means always in alliance withthe narrower tendencies and methods of the Inquisition. It is notable, however, that this great institution lost no time in claiming theprisoner, whose chief offence in its eyes was less her career as awarrior than her position as a sorceress. The actual facts of her lifewere of secondary importance to them. Orleans, Rheims, even her attackupon Paris were nothing in comparison with the black art which theybelieved to be her inspiration. The guidance of Heaven which was not theguidance of the Church was to them a claim which meant only rebellionof the direst kind. They had longed to seize her and strip her of herpresumptuous pretensions from the first moment of her appearance. Theycould not allow a day of her overthrow to pass by without snatching atthis much-desired victim. 

No one perhaps will ever be able to say what it is that makes a trialfor heresy and sorcery, especially in the days when fire and flame, the rack and the stake, stood at the end, so exciting and horriblyattractive to the mind. Whether it is the revelations that are hopedfor, of these strange commerces between earth and the unknown, intowhich we would all fain pry if we could, in pursuit of some betterunderstanding than has ever yet fallen to the lot of man; whether it isthe strange and dreadful pleasure of seeing a soul driven to extremityand fighting for its life through all the subtleties of thought andfierce attacks of interrogation--or the mere love of inflicting torture, misery, and death, which the Church was prevented from doing in thecommon way, it is impossible to tell; but there is no doubt that athrill like the wings of vultures crowding to the prey, a sense ofhorrible claws and beaks and greedy eyes is in the air, whenever such atribunal is thought of. The thrill, the stir, the eagerness among thoseblack birds of doom is more evident than usual in the headlong haste ofthat demand. _Sous l'influence de l'Angleterre_, say the historians; themore shame for them if it was so; but they were clearly under influencewider and more infallible, the influence of that instinct, whatever itmay be, which makes a trial for heresy ten thousand times more cruel, less restrained by any humanities of nature, than any other kind oftrial which history records. 

That is what the Inquisitor demanded after a long description of Jeanne, "called the Maid, " as having "dogmatised, sown, published, and causedto be published, many and diverse errors from which have ensued greatscandals against the divine honour and our holy faith. " "Using therights of our office and the authority committed to us by the Holy Seeof Rome we instantly command, and enjoin you in the name of the Catholicfaith, and under penalty of the law: and all other Catholic persons ofwhatsoever condition, pre-eminence, authority, or estate, to send or tobring as prisoner before us with all speed and surety the said Jeanne, vehemently suspected of various crimes springing from heresy, thatproceedings may be taken against her before us in the name of the HolyInquisition, and with the favour and aid of the doctors and masters ofthe University of Paris, and other notable counsellors present there. "

It was the English who put it into the heads of the Inquisitor and theUniversity to do this, all the anxious Frenchmen cry. We can only replyagain, the more shame for the French doctors and priests! But therewas very little time to bring that influence to bear; and there is aneagerness and precipitation in the demand which is far more like theheadlong natural rush for a much desired prize than any course of actionsuggested by a third party. Nor is there anything to lead us to believethat the movement was not spontaneous. It is little likely, indeed, thatthe Sorbonne nowadays would concern itself about any inspired maid, any more than the enlightened Oxford would do so. But the ideas of thefifteenth century were widely different, and witchcraft and heresy werethe most enthralling and exciting of subjects, as they are still towhosoever believes in them, learned or unlearned, great or small. 

It must be added that the entire mind of France, even of those who lovedJeanne and believed in her, must have been shaken to its depths by thiscatastrophe. We have no sympathy with those who compare the career ofany mortal martyr with the far more mysterious agony and passion ofour Lord. Yet we cannot but remember what a tremendous element thedisappointment of their hopes must have been in the misery of the firstdisciples, the Apostles, the mother, all the spectators who had watchedwith wonder and faith the mission of the Messiah. Had it failed? had allthe signs come to nothing, all those divine words and ways, to our mindsso much more wonderful than any miracles? Was there no meaning inthem? Were they mere unaccountable delusions, deceptions of the senses, inspirations perhaps of mere genius--not from God at all except in asecondary way? In the three terrible days that followed the Crucifixionthe burden of a world must have lain on the minds of those who hadseen every hope fail: no legions of angels appearing, no overwhelmingrevelation from heaven, no change in a moment out of misery into theuniversal kingship, the triumphant march. That was but the self-delusionof the earth which continually travesties the schemes of Heaven; yet themost terrible of all despairs is such a pause and horror of doubt lestnothing should be true. 

But in the case of this little Maiden, this handmaid of the Lord, thedeception might have been all natural and perhaps shared by herself. Were her first triumphs accidents merely, were her "voices" delusions, had she been given up by Heaven, of which she had called herself theservant? It was a stupor which quenched every voice--a great silencethrough the country, only broken by the penitential psalms at Tours. The Compiègne people, writing to Charles two days after May 23d, do notmention Jeanne at all. We need not immediately take into account thebaser souls always plentiful, the envious captains and the rest whomight be secretly rejoicing. The entire country, both friends and foes, had come to a dreadful pause and did not know what to think. The lastcircumstance of which we must remind the reader, and which was of thegreatest importance, is, that it was only a small part of France thatknew anything personally of Jeanne. From Tours it is a far cry toPicardy. All her triumphs had taken place in the south. The captive ofBeaulieu and Beaurevoir spent the sad months of her captivity among apopulation which could have heard of her only by flying rumours comingfrom hostile quarters. From the midland of France to the sea, nearto which her prison was situated, is a long way, and those northerndistricts were as unlike the Orleannais as if they had been in twodifferent countries. Rouen in Normandy no more resembled Rheims, thanEdinburgh resembled London: and in the fifteenth century that was sayinga great deal. Nothing can be more deceptive than to think of theseseparate and often hostile duchies as if they bore any resemblance tothe France of to-day. 

The captor of Jeanne was a vassal of Jean de Luxembourg and took her aswe have seen to the quarters of his master at Margny, into whose handsshe thenceforward passed. She was kept in the camp three or four daysand then transferred to the castle of Beaulieu, which belonged to him;and afterwards to the more important stronghold of Beaurevoir, whichseems to have been his principal residence. We know very few details ofher captivity. According to one chronicler, d'Aulon, her faithful friendand intendant, was with her at least in the former of those prisons, where at first she would appear to have been hopeful and in goodspirits, if we may trust to the brief conversation between her andd'Aulon, which is one of the few details which reach us of that period. While he lamented over the probable fate of Compiègne she was confident. "That poor town of Compiègne that you loved so much, " he said, "by thistime it will be in the hands of the enemies of France. " "No, " saidthe Maid, "the places which the king of Heaven brought back to theallegiance of the gentle King Charles by me, will not be retaken by hisenemies. " In this case at least the prophecy came true. 

And perhaps there might have been at first a certain relief in Jeanne'smind, such as often follows after a long threatened blow has fallen. Shehad no longer the vague tortures of suspense, and probably believed thatshe would be ransomed as was usual: and in this silence and seclusionher "voices" which she had not obeyed as at first, but yet which had notabandoned her, nor shown estrangement, were more near and audible thanamid the noise and tumult of war. They spoke to her often, sometimesthree times a day, as she afterwards said, in the unbroken quiet ofher prison. And though they no longer spoke of new enterprises andvictories, their words were full of consolation. But it was not longthat Jeanne's young and vigorous spirit could content itself withinaction. She was no mystic; willingly giving herself over to dreams andvisions is more possible to the old than to the young. Her confidenceand hope for her good friends of Compiègne gave way before the continuedtale of their sufferings, and the inveterate siege which was drivingthem to desperation. No doubt the worst news was told to Jeanne, andtwice over she made a desperate attempt to escape, in hope of being ableto succour them, but without any sanction, as she confesses, from herspiritual instructors. At Beaulieu the attempt was simple enough: thenarrative seems to imply that the doorway, or some part of the wall ofher room, had been closed with laths or planks nailed across an opening:and between these she succeeded in slipping, "as she was very slight, "with the hope of locking the door to an adjoining guard-room upon themen who had charge of her, and thus getting free. But alas! The porterof the château, who had no business there, suddenly appeared in thecorridor, and she was discovered and taken back to her chamber. AtBeaurevoir, which was farther off, her attempt was a much more desperateone, and indicates a despair and irritation of mind which had becomeunbearable. At this place her own condition was much alleviated; thecastle was the residence of Jean de Luxembourg's wife and aunt, ladieswho visited Jeanne continually, and soon became interested and attachedto her; but as the master of the house was himself in the camp beforeCompiègne, they had the advantage or disadvantage, as far as theprisoner was concerned, of constant news, and Jeanne's trouble for herfriends grew daily. 

She seems, indeed, after the assurance she had expressed at first, to have fallen into great doubt and even carried on within herself adespairing argument with her spiritual guides on this point, battlingwith these saintly influences as in the depths of the troubled heartmany have done with the Creator Himself in similar circumstances. "How, "she cried, "could God let them perish who had been so good and loyal totheir King?" St. Catherine replied gently that He would Himself care forthese _bons amis_, and even promised that "before the St. Martin"relief would come. But Jeanne had probably by this time--in her greatdisappointment and loneliness, and with the sense in her of so muchpower to help were she only free--got beyond her own control. They badeher to be patient. One of them, amid their exhortations to accept herfate cheerfully, and not to be astonished at it, seems to have conveyedto her mind the impression that she should not be delivered till she hadseen the King of England. "Truly I will not see him! I would rather diethan fall into the hands of the English, " cried Jeanne in her petulance. The King of England is spoken of always, it is curious to note, as ifhe had been a great, severe ruler like his father, never as the child hereally was. But Jeanne in her helplessness and impotence was impatienteven with her saints. Day by day the news came in from Compiègne, all that was favourable to the Burgundians received with joy andthanksgiving by the ladies of Luxembourg, while the captive consumed herheart with vain indignation. At last Jeanne would seem to have wroughtherself up to the most desperate of expedients. Whether her room was inthe donjon, or whether she was allowed sufficient freedom in the houseto mount to the battlements there, we are not informed--probably thelatter was the case: for it was from the top of the tower that the rashgirl at last flung herself down, carried away by what sudden frenzyof alarm or sting of evil tidings can never be known. Probably she hadhoped that a miracle would be wrought on her behalf, and that faithwas all that was wanted, as on so many other occasions. Perhaps she hadheard of the negotiations to sell her to the English, which would give akeener urgency to her determination to get free; all that appears in thestory, however, is her wild anxiety about Compiègne and her _bons amis_. How she escaped destruction no one knows. She was rescued for a moretremendous and harder fate. 

The Maid was taken up as dead from the foot of the tower (the height isestimated at sixty feet); but she was not dead, nor even seriously hurt. Her frame, so slight that she had been able to slip between the bars putup to secure her, had so little solidity that the shock would seemto have been all that ailed her. She was stunned and unconscious andremained so far some time; and for three days neither ate nor drank. Butthough she was so humbled by the effects of the fall, "she was comfortedby St. Catherine, who bade her confess and implore the mercy of God" forher rash disobedience--and repeated the promise that before MartinmasCompiègne should be relieved. Jeanne did not perhaps in her rebelliondeserve this encouragement; but the heavenly ladies were kind andpitiful and did not stand upon their dignity. The wonderful thing wasthat Jeanne recovered perfectly from this tremendous leap. 

The earthly ladies, though so completely on the other side, werescarcely less kind to the Maid. They visited her daily, carried theirnews to her, were very friendly and sweet: and no doubt other visitorscame to make the acquaintance of a prisoner so wonderful. There was onepoint on which they were very urgent, and this was about her dress. Itshamed and troubled them to see her in the costume of a man. Jeanne hadher good reasons for that, which perhaps she did not care to tellthem, fearing to shock the ears of a demoiselle of Luxembourg with thesuggestion of dangers of which she knew nothing. No doubt it was truethat while doing the serious work of war, as she said afterwards, it wasbest that she should be dressed as a man; but Jeanne had reason to knowbesides, that it was safer, among the rough comrades and gaolers who nowsurrounded her, to wear the tight-fitting and firmly fastened dress ofa soldier. She answered the ladies and their remonstrances with allthe grace of a courtier. Could she have done it she would rather haveyielded the point to them, she said, than to any one else in France, except the Queen. The women wherever she went were always faithfulto this young creature, so pure-womanly in her young angel-hood andman-hood. The poor followed to kiss her hands or her armour, the richwooed her with tender flatteries and persuasions. There is not record inall her career of any woman who was not her friend. 

For the last dreary month of that winter she was sent to the fortressof Crotoy on the Somme, for what reason we are not told, probably tobe more near the English into whose hands she was about to be givenup: again another shameful bargain in which the guilt lies with theBurgundians and not with the English. If Charles I. Was sold as we Scotsall indignantly deny, the shame of the sale was on our nation, not onEngland, whom nobody has ever blamed for the transaction. The sale ofJeanne was brutally frank. It was indeed a ransom which was paid toJean of Luxembourg with a share to the first captor, the archer who hadsecured her; but it was simple blood-money as everybody knew. At Crotoyshe had once more the solace of female society, again with muchpressing upon her of their own heavy skirts and hanging sleeves. Afellow-prisoner in the dungeon of Crotoy, a priest, said mass every dayand gave her the holy communion. And her mind seems to have been soothedand calmed. Compiègne was relieved; the saints had kept their word: shehad that burden the less upon her soul: and over the country there wereagainst stirrings of French valour and success. The day of the Maid wasover, but it began to bear the fruit of a national quickening of vigourand life. 

It was at Crotoy, in December, that she was transferred to Englishhands. The eager offer of the University of Paris to see her speedycondemnation had not been accepted, and perhaps the Burgundians hadbeen willing to wait, to see if any ransom was forthcoming fromFrance. Perhaps too, Paris, which sang the _Te Deum_ when she was takenprisoner, began to be a little startled by its own enthusiasm and to askitself the question what there was to be so thankful about?--a resultwhich has happened before in the history of that impulsive city:--andParis was too near the centre of France, where the balance seemed tobe turning again in favour of the national party, to have its thoughtsdistracted by such a trial as was impending. It seemed better to theEnglish leaders to conduct their prisoner to a safer place, to thedepths of Normandy where they were most strong. They seem to havecarried her away in the end of the year, travelling slowly along thecoast, and reaching Rouen by way of Eu and Dieppe, as far away aspossible from any risk of rescue. She arrived in Rouen in the beginningof the year 1431, having thus been already for nearly eight months inclose custody. But there were no further ministrations of kind women forJeanne. She was now distinctly in the hands of her enemies, those whohad no sympathy or natural softening of feeling towards her. 

The severities inflicted upon her in her new prison at Rouen wereterrible, almost incredible. We are told that she was kept in an ironcage (like the Countess of Buchan in earlier days by Edward I. ), boundhands, and feet, and throat, to a pillar, and watched incessantly byEnglish soldiers--the latter being an abominable and hideous methodof torture which was never departed from during the rest of her life. Afterwards, at the beginning of her trial she was relieved from thecage, but never from the presence and scrutiny of this fierce andhateful bodyguard. Such detestable cruelties were in the manner ofthe time, which does not make us the less sicken at them with burningindignation and the rage of shame. For this aggravation of hersufferings England alone was responsible. The Burgundians at their worsthad not used her so. It is true that she was to them a piece ofvaluable property worth so much good money; which is a powerful argumenteverywhere. But to the English she meant no money: no one offered toransom Jeanne on the side of her own party, for whom she had doneso much. Even at Tours and Orleans, so far as appears, there was nosubscription--to speak in modern terms, --no cry among the burghers togather their crowns for her redemption--not a word, not an effort, onlya barefooted procession, a mass, a Miserere, which had no issue. Francestood silent to see what would come of it; and her scholars and divinesswarmed towards Rouen to make sure that nothing but harm should comeof it to the ignorant country lass, who had set up such pretences ofknowing better than others. The King congratulated himself that hehad another prophetess as good as she, and a Heaven-sent boy from themountains who would do as well and better than Jeanne. Where was Dunois?Where was La Hire, (1) a soldier bound by no conventions, a captain whosetroop went like the wind where it listed, and whose valour was known?Where was young Guy de Laval, so ready to sell his lands that his menmight be fit for service? All silent; no man drawing a sword or sayinga word. It is evident that in this frightful pause of fate, Jeanne hadbecome to France as to England, the Witch whom it was perhaps a dangerto have had anything to do with, whose spells had turned the worldupside down for a moment: but these spells had become ineffectual orworn out as is the nature of sorcery. No explanation, not even thewell-worn and so often valid one of human baseness, could explain theterrible situation, if not this. 

 (1) La Hire was at Louvain, which we hear a little later the new English levies would not march to besiege till the Maid was dead, and where Dunois joined him in March of this fatal year. These two at Louvain within a few leagues of Rouen and not a sword drawn for Jeanne!--the wonder grows. 

CHAPTER XI -- THE JUDGES. 1431. 

The name of Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, appears to us at thislong distance as arising out of the infernal mists, into which, when hisministry of shame was accomplished, he disappeared again, bearing withhim nothing but hatred and ill fame. Yet in his own day and to hiscontemporaries, he was not an inconsiderable man. He was of Rheims, a great student, and excellent scholar, the friend of many good men, highly esteemed among the ranks of the learned, a good man of business, which is not always the attribute of a scholar, and at the same time aBurgundian of pronounced sentiments, holding for his Duke, against theKing. When Beauvais was summoned by Charles, after his coronation, atthat moment of universal triumph when all seemed open for him to marchupon Paris if he would, the city had joyfully thrown open its doors tothe royal army, and in doing so had driven out its Bishop, who was hoton the other side. He would not seem to have been wanted in Paris atthat moment. The "triste Bedford, " as Michelet calls him, had no meansof employing an ambitious priest, no dirty work for the moment to givehim. It is natural to suppose that a man so admirably adapted for thatemployment went in search of it to the ecclesiastical court, notbeloved of England, which the Cardinal Bishop of Winchester held there. Winchester was the only one of the House of Lancaster who had money tocarry on the government either at home or abroad. The two priests, as the historians are always pleased to insinuate in respect toecclesiastics, soon understood each other, and Winchester became awarethat he had in Cauchon a tool ready for any shameful enterprise. It isnot, however, necessary to assume so much as this, for we have not theleast reason to believe that either one or the other of them had theslightest doubt on the subject of Jeanne, or as to her character. Shewas a pernicious witch, filling a hitherto invincible army with thatsavage fright which is but too well understood among men, and whichproduces cruel outrages as well as cowardly panic. The air of this veryday, while I write, is ringing with the story of a woman burnt to deathby her own family under the influence of that same horrible panic andterror. Cauchon was the countryman, almost the _pays_--an untranslatableexpression, --of Jeanne; but he did not believe in her any more than theloftier ecclesiastics of France believed in Bernadette of Lourdes, who was of the spiritual lineage of Jeanne, nor than we should believeto-day in a similar pretender. It seems unnecessary then to think ofdark plots hatched between these two dark priests against the white, angelic apparition of the Maid. 

What services Cauchon had done to recommend him to the favour ofWinchester we are not told, but he was so much in favour that theCardinal had recommended him to the Pope for the vacant archbishopricof Rouen a few months before there was any immediate question of Jeanne. The appointment was opposed by the clergy of Rouen, and the Pope had notcome to any decision as yet on the subject. But no doubt the ambition ofCauchon made him very eager, with such a tempting prize before him, torecommend himself to his English patron by every means in his power. Andhe it was who undertook the office of negotiating the ransom of Jeannefrom the hands of Jean de Luxembourg. We doubt whether after all itwould be just even to call this a nefarious bargain. To the carelessseigneur it would probably be very much a matter of course. The ransomoffered--six thousand francs--was as good as if she had been a prince. The ladies at home might be indignant, but what was their foolish fancyfor a high-flown girl in comparison with these substantial crowns in hispocket; and to be free from the responsibility of guarding her would bean advantage too. And if her own party did not stir on her behalf, whyshould he? A most pertinent question. Cauchon, on the other hand, couldassure all objectors that no summary vengeance was to be taken onthe Maid. She was to be judged by the Church, and by the best men theUniversity could provide, and if she were found innocent, no doubt wouldgo free. 

They must have been sanguine indeed who hoped for a triumphant acquittalof Jeanne; but still it may have been hoped that a trial by hercountrymen would in every case be better for her than to languish inprison or to be seized perhaps by the English on some after occasion, and to perish by their hands. Let us therefore be fair to Cauchon, ifpossible, up to the beginning of the _Procès_. He was no Frenchman, but a Burgundian; his allegiance was to his Duke, not to the King ofEngland; but his natural sovereign did so, and many, very many men ofnote and importance were equally base, and did not esteem it base atall. Had the inhabitants of Rheims, his native town, or of Rouen, in which _his_ trial and downfall took place as well as Jeanne's, pronounced for the King of Prussia in the last war, and proclaimedthemselves his subjects, the traitors would have been hung with infamyfrom their own high towers, or driven into their river headlong. Butthings were very different in the fifteenth century. There has neverbeen a moment in our history when either England or Scotland haspronounced for a foreign sway. Scotland fought with desperation forcenturies against the mere name of suzerainty, though of a kindred race. There have been terrible moments of forced subjugation at the point ofthe sword; but never any such phenomena as appeared in France, so faron in the world's history as was that brilliant and highly culturedage. Such a state of affairs is to our minds impossible to understandor almost to believe: but in the interests of justice it must be fullyacknowledged and understood. 

Cauchon arises accordingly, not at first with any infamy, out of theobscurity. He had been expelled and dethroned from his See, but thisonly for political reasons. He was ecclesiastically Bishop of Beauvaisstill; it was within his diocese that the Maid had taken prisoner, andthere also her last acts of magic, if magic there was, had taken place. He had therefore a legal right to claim the jurisdiction, a right whichno one had any interest in taking from him. If Paris was disappointedat not having so interesting a trial carried on before its courts, therewas compensation in the fact that many doctors of the University werecalled to assist Cauchon in his examination of the Maid, and to bringher, witch, sorceress, heretic, whatever she might be, to question. These doctors were not undistinguished or unworthy men. A number of themheld high office in the Church; almost all were honourably connectedwith the University, the source of learning in France. "With what artwere they chosen!" exclaims M. Blaze de Bury. "A number of theologians, the élite of the time, had been named to represent France at the councilof Bâle; of these Cauchon chose the flower. " This does not seem on theface of it to be a fact against, but rather in favour of, the tribunal, which the reader naturally supposes must have been the better, the morejust, for being chosen among the flower of learning in France. They werenot men who could be imagined to be the tools of any Bishop. Quicherat, in his moderate and able remarks on this subject, selects for specialmention three men who took a very important part in it, Guillame Érard, Nicole Midi, and Tomas de Courcelles. They were all men who held a highplace in the respect of their generation. Érard was a friend of Machet, the confessor of Charles VII. , who had been a member of the tribunalat Poitiers which first pronounced upon the pretensions of Jeanne; yetafter the trial of the Maid Machet still describes him as a man of thehighest virtue and heavenly wisdom. Nicole Midi continued to hold anhonourable place in his University for many years, and was the manchosen to congratulate Charles when Paris finally became again theresidence of the King. Courcelles was considered the first theologian ofthe age. "He was an austere and eloquent young man, " says Quicherat, "of a lucid mind, though nourished on abstractions. He was the first oftheologians long before he had attained the age at which he could assumethe rank of doctor, and even before he had finished his studies he wasconsidered as the successor of Gerson. He was the light of the councilof Bâle. Eneas Piccolomini (Pope Pius II. ) speaks with admiration of hiscapacity and his modesty. In him we recognise the father of the freedomof the Gallican Church. His disinterestedness is shown by the simpleposition with which he contented himself. He died with no higher rankthan that of Dean of the Chapter of Paris. "

Did this in Cæsar seem ambitious? Was this the man to be used fortheir vile ends by a savage English party thirsting for the blood of aninnocent victim, and by the vile priest who was its tool? It does notseem so to our eyes across the long level of the centuries which clearaway so many mists. And no more dreadful accusation can be broughtagainst France than the suggestion that men like these, her best andmost carefully trained, were willing to act as blood-hounds forthe advantage and the pay of the invader. But there are many Frenchhistorians to whom the mere fact of a black gown or at least anecclesiastical robe, confounds every testimony, and to whom even thename of Frenchman does not make it appear possible that a priest shouldretain a shred of honour or of honesty. We should have said by the lightof nature and probability that had every guarantee been required for theimpartiality and justice of such a tribunal, they could not havebeen better secured than by the selection of such men to conduct itsproceedings. They made a great and terrible mistake, as the wisestof men have made before now. They did much worse, they behaved to anunfortunate girl who was in their power with indescribable ferocity andcruelty; but we must hope that this was owing to the period at whichthey lived rather than to themselves. 

It is not perhaps indeed from the wise and learned, the Stoics andPundits of a University, that we should choose judges for the divinesimplicity of those babes and sucklings out of whose mouth praise isperfected. At the same time to choose the best men is not generally theway adopted to procure a base judgement. Cauchon might have been subjectto this blame had he filled the benches of his court with creatures ofhis own, nameless priests and dialecticians, knowing nothing buttheir own poor science of words. He did not do so. There were but twoEnglishmen in the assembly, neither of them men of any importance orinfluence although there must have been many English priests in thecountry and in the train of Winchester. There were not even any specialpartisans of Burgundy, though some of the assessors were Burgundian bybirth. We should have said, had we known no more than this, that everyprecaution had been taken to give the Maid the fairest trial. But at thesame time a trial which is conducted under the name of the Inquisitionis always suspect. The mere fact of that terrible name seems toestablish a foregone conclusion; few are the prisoners at that bar whohave ever escaped. This fact is almost all that can be set against thehigh character of the individuals who composed the tribunal. At allevents it is no argument against the English that they permitted thebest men in France to be chosen as Jeanne's judges. It is the mostbewildering and astonishing of historical facts that they were so, andyet came to the conclusion they did, by the means they did, and thatwithout falling under the condemnation, or scorn, or horror of theirfellow-men. 

This then was the assembly which gathered in Rouen in the beginning of1431. Quicherat will not venture to affirm even that intimidation wasdirectly employed to effect their decision. He says that the evidence"tends to prove" that this was the case, but honestly allows that, "itis well to remark that the witnesses contradict each other. " "In allthat I have said, " he adds, "my intention has been to prove that thejudges of the Maid had in no way the appearance of partisans hotlypursuing a political vengeance; but that, on the contrary, their knownweight, the consideration which most of them enjoyed, and the natureof the tribunal for which they were assembled, were all calculated toproduce generally an expectation full of confidence and respect. "

Meanwhile there is not a word to be said for the treatment to whichJeanne herself was subjected, she being, so far as is apparent, entirelyin English custody. She had been treated with tolerable gentleness itwould seem in the first part of her captivity while in the hands of Jeande Luxembourg, the Count de Ligny. The fact that the ladies of the housewere for her friends must have assured this, and there is no complaintmade anywhere of cruelty or even unkindness. When she arrived in Rouenshe was confined in the middle chamber of the donjon, which was the bestwe may suppose, neither a dungeon under the soil, nor a room under theleads, but one to which there was access by a short flight of steps fromthe courtyard, and which was fully lighted and not out of reach or sightof life. But in this chamber was an iron cage, (1) within which she wasbound, feet, and waist and neck, from the time of her arrival untilthe beginning of the trial, a period of about six weeks. Five Englishsoldiers of the lowest class watched her night and day, three in theroom itself, two at the door. It is enough to think for a moment of theprobable manners and morals of these troopers to imagine what torturemust have been inflicted by their presence upon a young woman who hadalways been sensitive above all things to the laws of personal modestyand reserve. Their course jests would no doubt be unintelligible toher, which would be an alleviation; but their coarse laughter, theirrevolting touch, their impure looks, would be an endless incessantmisery. We are told that she indignantly bestowed a hearty buffet on thecheek of a tailor who approached her too closely when it was intendedto furnish her with female dress; but she was helpless to defend herselfwhen in her irons, and had to endure as she best could--the bars ofher cage let us hope, if cage there was, affording her some littleprotection from the horror of the continual presence of these rudeattendants, with whom it was a shame to English gentlemen and knights tosurround a helpless woman. 

When her trial began Jeanne was released from her cage, but was stillchained by one foot to a wooden beam during the day, and at night to theposts of her bed. Sometimes her guards would wake her to tell her thatshe had been condemned and was immediately to be led forth to execution;but that was a small matter. Attempts were also made to inflict thebarest insult and outrage upon her, and on one occasion she is said tohave been saved only by the Earl of Warwick, who heard her cries andwent to her rescue. By night as by day she clung to her male garb, tightly fastened by the innumerable "points" of which Shakespeare sooften speaks. Such were the horrible circumstances in which she awaitedher public appearance before her judges. She was brought before themevery day for months together, to be badgered by the keenest wits inFrance, coming back and back with artful questions upon every detailof every subject, to endeavour to shake her firmness or force her intoself-contradiction. Imagine a cross-examination going on for months, like those--only more cruel than those--to which we sometimes see anunfortunate witness exposed in our own courts of law. There is nothingmore usual than to see people break down entirely after a day or twoof such a tremendous ordeal, in which their hearts and lives are turnedinside out, their minds so bewildered that they know not what they aresaying, and everything they have done in their lives exhibited in theworst, often in an entirely fictitious, light, to the curiosity andamusement of the world. 

But all our processes are mercy in comparison with those to which Frenchprisoners at the bar are still exposed. It is unnecessary to enter intoan account of these which are so well known; but they show that evensuch a trial as that of Jeanne was by no means so contrary to commonusage, as it would be, and always would have been in England. In Englandwe warn the accused to utter no rash word which may be used against him;in France the first principle is to draw from him every rash word thathe can be made to bring forth. This was the method employed with Jeanne. Her judges were all Churchmen and dialecticians of the subtlest witand most dexterous faculties in France; they had all, or almost all, astrong prepossession against her. Though we cannot believe that men ofsuch quality were suborned, there was, no doubt, enough of jealous andindignant feeling among them to make the desire of convicting Jeannemore powerful with them than the desire for pure justice. She was a trueChristian, but not perhaps the soundest of Church-women. Her visions hadnot the sanction of any priest's approval, except indeed the officialbut not warm affirmation of the Council at Poitiers. She had nothastened to take the Church into her confidence nor to put herself underits protection. Though her claims had been guaranteed by the companyof divines at Poitiers, she herself had always appealed to her privateinstructions, through her saints, rather than to the guiding of anypriest. The chief ecclesiastical dignitary of her own party had justheld her up to the reprobation of the people for this cause: she was tooindependent, so proud that she would take no advice but acted accordingto her own will. The more accustomed a Churchman is to experiencethe unbounded devotion and obedience of women, the more enraged he isagainst those who judge for themselves or have other guides on whomthey rely. Jeanne was, beside all other sins alleged against her, apresumptuous woman: and very few of these men had any desire to acquither. They were little accustomed to researches which were solelyintended to discover the truth: their principle rather was, as it hasbeen the principle of many, to obtain proofs that their own particularway of thinking was the right one. It is not perhaps very good even fora system of doctrine when this is the principle by which it is tested. It is more fatal still, on this principle, to judge an individual fordeath or for life. It will be abundantly proved, however, by all that isto follow, that in face of this tribunal, learned, able, powerful, andprejudiced, the peasant girl of nineteen stood like a rock, unmovedby all their cleverness, undaunted by their severity, seldom or neverlosing her head, or her temper, her modest steadfastness, or her highspirit. If they hoped to have an easy bargain of her, never were menmore mistaken. Not knowing a from b, as she herself said, untrained, unaided, she was more than a match for them all. 

Round about this centre of eager intelligence, curiosity, and prejudice, the cathedral and council chamber teeming with Churchmen, was a dark andsilent ring of laymen and soldiers. A number of the English leaders werein Rouen, but they appear very little. Winchester, who had verylately come from England with an army, which according to some of thehistorians would not budge from Calais, where it had landed, "for fearof the Maid"--was the chief person in the place, but did not make anyappearance at the trial, curiously enough; the Duke of Bedford we areinformed was visible on one shameful occasion, but no more. But Warwick, who was the Governor of the town, appears frequently and various otherlords with him. We see them in the mirror held up to us by the Frenchhistorians, pressing round in an ever narrowing circle, closing up uponthe tribunal in the midst, pricking the priests with perpetual swordpoints if they seem to loiter. They would have had everything pushed on, no delay, no possibility of escape. It is very possible that this wasthe case, for it is evident that the Witch was deeply obnoxious to theEnglish, and that they were eager to have her and her endless processout of the way; but the evidence for their terror and fierce desire toexpedite matters is of the feeblest. A canon of Rouen declared at thetrial that he had heard it said by Maître Pierre Morice, and Nicolasl'Oyseleur, judges assessors, and by other whose names he does notrecollect, "that the said English were so afraid of her that they didnot dare to begin the siege of Louviers until she was dead; and that itwas necessary if one would please them, to hasten the trial as much aspossible and to find the means of condemning her. " Very likely this wasquite true: but it cannot at all be taken for proved by such evidence. Another contemporary witness allows that though some of the Englishpushed on her trial for hate, some were well disposed to her; the mannerof Jeanne's imprisonment is the only thing which inclines the reader tobelieve every evil thing that is said against them. 

Such were the circumstances in which Jeanne was brought to trail. Thepopulation, moved to pity and to tears as any population wouldhave been, before the end, would seem at the beginning to have beenindifferent and not to have taken much interest one way or another: thecourt, a hundred men and more with all their hangers-on, the cleverestmen in France, one more distinguished and impeccable than the others:the stern ring of the Englishmen outside keeping an eye upon the tedioussuit and all its convolutions: these all appear before us, surroundingas with bands of iron the young lonely victim in the donjon, whosubmitting to every indignity, and deprived of every aid, feeling thatall her friends had abandoned her, yet stood steadfast and strong inher absolute simplicity and honesty. It was but two years in that samespring weather since she had left Vaucouleurs to seek the fortune ofFrance, to offer herself to the struggle which now was coming to an end. Not a soul had Jeanne to comfort or stand by her. She had her saintswho--one wonders if such a thought ever entered into her young visionaryhead--had lured her to her doom, and who still comforted her withenigmatical words, promises which came true in so sadly different asense from that in which they were understood. 

 (1) We are glad to add that the learned Quicherat has doubts on the subject of the cage. 

CHAPTER XII -- BEFORE THE TRIAL. LENT, 1431. 

We have not, however, sufficiently described the horror of the prison, and the treatment to which Jeanne was exposed, though the picture isalready dark enough. It throws a horrible yet also a grotesque lightupon the savage manners of the time to find that the chamber in whichshe was confined, had secret provision for an _espionnage_ of the mostbase kind, openings made in the walls through which everything that tookplace in the room, every proceeding of the unfortunate prisoner, couldbe spied upon and every word heard. The idea of such a secret watchhas always been attractive to the vulgar mind, and no doubt it has beenbelieved to exist many times when there was little or no justificationfor such an infernal thought. From the "ear" of Dionysius, down to the_Trou Judas_, which early tourists on the Continent were taught to fearin every chamber door, the idea has descended to our own times. It wouldseem, however, to be beyond doubt that this odious means of acquiringinformation was in full operation during the trial of Jeanne, andvarious spies were permitted to peep at her, and to watch for anyunadvised word she might say in her most private moments. We are toldthat the Duke of Bedford made use of the opportunity in a still morerevolting way, and was present, a secret spectator, at the fantasticscene when Jeanne was visited by a committee of matrons who examinedher person to prove or to disprove one of the hateful insinuations whichwere made about her. The imagination, however, refuses to conceive thata man of serious age and of high functions should have degraded himselfto the level of a Peeping Tom in this way; all the French historians, nevertheless, repeat the story though on the merest hearsay evidence. And they also relate, with more apparent truth, how a double treacherywas committed upon the unfortunate prisoner by stationing twosecretaries at these openings, to take down her conversation with a spywho had been sent to her in the guise of a countryman of her own; andthat not only Cauchon but Warwick also was present on this occasion, listening, while their plot was carried out by the vile traitor inside. The clerks, we are glad to say, are credited with a refusal to act: butWarwick did not shrink from the ignominy. The Englishmen indeed shrankfrom no ignominy; nor did the great French savants assembled under thepresidency of the Bishop. It is necessary to grant to begin with thatthey were neither ignorant nor base men, yet from the beginning of thetrial almost every step taken by them appears base, as well as marked, in the midst of all their subtlety and diabolical cunning, by theprofoundest ignorance of human nature. The spy of whom we have spoken, L'Oyseleur (bird-snarer, a significant name), was sent, and consented tobe sent, to Jeanne in her prison, as a fellow prisoner, a _pays_, like herself from Lorraine, to invite her confidence: but his longconversations with the Maid, which were heard behind their backs bythe secretaries, elicited nothing from her that she did not say in thepublic examination. She had no secret devices to betray to a traitor. She would not seem, indeed, to have suspected the man at all, noteven when she saw him among her judges taking part against her. Jeanneherself suspected no falsehood, but made her confession to him, when shefound that he was a priest, and trusted him fully. The bewilderingand confusing fact, turning all the contrivances of her judges intofoolishness, was, that she had nothing to confess that she was not readyto tell in the eye of day. 

The adoption of this abominable method of eliciting secrets from thecandid soul which had none, was justified, it appears, by the manner ofher trial, which was after the rules of the Inquisition--by which evenmore than by those which regulate an ordinary French trial the guilt ofthe accused is a foregone conclusion for which proof is sought, not afair investigation of facts for abstract purposes of justice. The firstthing to be determined by the tribunal was the counts of the indictmentagainst Jeanne; was she to be tried for magical arts, for sorcery andwitchcraft? It is very probable that the mission of L'Oyseleur was toobtain evidence that would clear up this question by means of recallingto her the stories of her childhood, of the enchanted tree, and theFairies' Well; from which sources, her accusers anxiously hoped to provethat she derived her inspiration. But it is very clear that no suchevidence was forthcoming, and that it seemed to them hopeless toattribute sorcery to her; therefore the accusation was changed to thatof heresy alone. The following mandate from the University authorisingher prosecution will show what the charge was; and the reader will notethat one of its darkest items is the costume, which for so many goodand sufficient reasons she wore. Here is the official description of theaccused:

"A woman, calling herself the Maid, leaving the dress and habit of hersex against the divine law, a thing abominable to God, clothed and armedin the habit and condition of a man, has done cruel deeds of homicide, and as is said has made the simple people believe, in order to abuseand lead them astray, that she was sent by God, and had knowledge of Hisdivine secrets; along with several other doctrines (_dogmatisations_), very dangerous, prejudicial, and scandalous to our holy Catholic faith, in pursuing which abuses, and exercising hostility against us and ourpeople, she has been taken in arms, before Compiègne, and brought as aprisoner before us. "

According to French law the indictment ought to have been founded upon apreliminary examination into the previous life of the accused, which, asit does not appear in the formal accusations, it was supposed had neverbeen made. Recent researches, however, have proved that it was made, butwas not of a nature to strengthen or justify any accusation. All thatthe examiners could discover was that Jeanne d'Arc was a good and honestmaid who left a spotless reputation behind her in her native village, and that not a suspicion of _dogmatisations_, nor worship of fairies, nor any other unseemly thing was associated with her name. Other thingsless favourable, we are told, were reported of her: the statement, for instance, made in apparent good faith by Monstrelet the Burgundianchronicler, that she had been for some time a servant in an _auberge_, and there had learned to ride, and to consort with men--a statementtotally without foundation, which was scarcely referred to in the trial. 

The skill of M. Quicherat discovered the substance of those inquiriesamong the many secondary papers, but they were not made use of in theformal proceedings. This also we are told, though contrary to the habitof French law, was justified by the methods of the Inquisition, whichwere followed throughout the trial. One breach of law and justice, however, is permitted by no code. It is expressly forbidden by French, and even by inquisitorial law, that a prisoner should be tried byhis enemies--that is by judges avowedly hostile to him: an initialdifficulty which it would have been impossible to get over and whichhad therefore to be ignored. One brave and honest man, Nicolas deHouppeville, had the courage to make this observation in one of theearliest sittings of the assembly:

"Neither the Bishop of Beauvais" (he said) "nor the other members of thetribunal ought to be judges in the matter; and it did not seem to him agood mode of procedure that those who were of the opposite party tothe accused should be her judges--considering also that she had beenexamined already by the clergy of Poitiers, and by the Archbishop ofRheims, who was the metropolitan of the said Bishop of Beauvais. "

Nicolas de Houppeville was a lawyer and had a right to be heard on sucha point; but the reply of the judges was to throw him into prison, notwithout threats on the part of the civil authorities to carry the pointfurther by throwing him into the Seine. This was the method by whichevery honest objection was silenced. That the examination at Poitiers, where the judges, as has been seen, were by no means too favourable toJeanne, should never have been referred to by her present examiners, though there was no doubt it ought to have been one of the mostimportant sources of the preliminary information--is also veryremarkable. It was suggested indeed to Jeanne at a late period of thetrial, that she might appeal to the Archbishop; but he was, as she wellknew, one of her most cruel enemies. 

Still more important was the breach of all justice apparent in the factthat she had no advocate, no counsel on her side, no one to speak toher and conduct her defence. It was suggested to her near the end of theproceedings that she might choose one of her judges to fill this office;but even if the proposal had been a genuine one or at all likely tobe to her advantage, it was then too late to be of any use. Theseparticulars, we believe, were enough to invalidate any process in strictlaw; but the name of law seems ridiculous altogether as applied to thisrambling and cruel cross-examination in which was neither sense nordecorum. The reader will understand that there were no witnesses eitherfor or against her, the answers of the accused herself forming theentire evidence. 

One or two particulars may still be added to make the background atleast more clear. The prison of Jeanne, as we have seen, was not leftin the usual silence of such a place; the constant noise with whichthe English troopers filled the air, jesting, gossiping, andcarrying on their noisy conversation, if nothing worse and moreoffensive--sometimes, as Jeanne complains, preventing her from hearing(her sole solace) the soft voices of her saintly visitors--was not heronly disturbance. Her solitude was broken by curious and inquisitivevisitors of various kinds. L'Oyseleur, the abominable detective, whoprofessed to be her countryman and who beguiled her into talk of herchildhood and native place, was the first of these; and it is possiblethat at first his presence was a pleasure to her. One other visitor ofwhom we hear accidentally, a citizen of Rouen, Pierre Casquel, seems tohave got in private interest and with a more or less good motive and noevil meaning. He warned her to answer with prudence the questions putto her, since it was a matter of life and death. She seemed to him tobe "very simple" and still to believe that she might be ransomed. EarlWarwick, the commander of the town, appears on various occasions. Heprobably had his headquarters in the Castle, and thus heard her cry forhelp in her danger, executing, let us hope, summary vengeance on herbrutal assailant; but he also evidently took advantage of his power toshow his interesting prisoner to his friends on occasion. And it was hewho took her original captor, Jean de Luxembourg, now Comte de Ligny, by whom she had been given up, to see her, along with an English lord, sometimes named as Lord Sheffield. The Belgian who had put so many goodcrowns in his pocket for her ransom, thought it good taste to enter witha jesting suggestion that he had come to buy her back. 

"Jeanne, I will have you ransomed if you will promise never to bear armsagainst us again, " he said. The Maid was not deceived by this mockingsuggestion. "It is well for you to jest, " she said, "but I know you haveno such power. I know that the English will kill me, believing, after Iam dead, that they will be able to win all the kingdom of France: butif there were a hundred thousand more Goddens than there are, they shallnever win the kingdom of France. " The English lord drew his dagger tostrike the helpless girl, all the stories say, but was prevented byWarwick. Warwick, however, we are told, though he had thus saved hertwice, "recovered his barbarous instincts" as soon as he got outside, and indignantly lamented the possibility of Jeanne's escape from thestake. 

Such incidents as these alone lightened or darkened her weary days inprison. A traitor or spy, a prophet of evil shaking his head over herdanger, a contemptuous party of jeering nobles; afterwards inquisitors, for ever repeating in private their tedious questions: these all visitedher--but never a friend. Jeanne was not afraid of the English lord'sdagger, or of the watchful eye of Warwick over her. Even when spyingthrough a hole, if the English earl and knight, indeed permitted himselfthat strange indulgence, his presence and inspection must have beenalmost the only defence of the prisoner. Our historians all quote, with an admiration almost as misplaced as their horror of Warwick's"barbarous instincts, " the _vrai galant homme_ of an Englishman who inthe midst of the trial cried out "_Brave femme_!" (it is difficult totranslate the words, for _brave_ means more than brave)--"why was shenot English?" However we are not concerned to defend the English shareof the crime. The worst feature of all is that she never seems tohave been visited by any one favourable and friendly to her, exceptafterwards, the two or three pitying priests whose hearts were touchedby her great sufferings, though they remained among her judges, and gavesentence against her. No woman seems ever to have entered that dreadfulprison except those "matrons" who came officially as has been alreadysaid. The ladies de Ligny had cheered her in her first confinement, the kind women of Abbeville had not been shut out even from the gloomyfortress of Le Crotoy. But here no woman ever seems to have beenpermitted to enter, a fact which must either be taken to prove thehostility of the population, or the very vigorous regulations of theprison. Perhaps the barbarous watch set upon her, the soldiers everpresent, may have been a reason for the absence of any female visitor. At all events it is a very distinct fact that during the whole periodof her trial, five months of misery, except on the one occasion alreadyreferred to, no woman came to console the unfortunate Maid. She hadnever before during all her vicissitudes been without their constantministrations. 

One woman, the only one we ever hear of who was not the partisan andlover of the Maid, does, however, make herself faintly seen amid thecrowd. Catherine of La Rochelle--the woman who had laid claim to saintlyvisitors and voices like those of Jeanne, and who had been for a timereceived and fêted at the Court of Charles with vile satisfaction, asmaking the loss of the Maid no such great thing--had by this time beendropped as useless, on the appearance of the shepherd boy quoted by theArchbishop of Rheims, and had fallen into the hands of the English: wasnot she too a witch, and admirably qualified to give evidence as to theother witch, for whose blood all around her were thirsting? Catherinewas ready to say anything that was evil of her sister sorceress. "Takecare of her, " she said; "if you lose sight of her for one moment, thedevil will carry her away. " Perhaps this was the cause of the guardin Jeanne's room, the ceaseless scrutiny to which she was exposed. Thevulgar slanderer was allowed to escape after this valuable testimony. She comes into history like a will-o'-the-wisp, one of the marsh lightsthat mean nothing but putrescence and decay, and then flickers out againwith her false witness into the wastes of inanity. That she should havebeen treated so leniently and Jeanne so cruelly! say the historians. Reason good: she was nothing, came of nothing, and meant nothing. Itis profane to associate Jeanne's pure and beautiful name with that ofa mountebank. This is the only woman in all her generation, so faras appears to us, who was not the partisan and devoted friend of thespotless Maid. 

The aspect of that old-world city of Rouen, still so old and picturesqueto the visitor of to-day, though all new since that time except thechurches, is curious and interesting to look back upon. It must havehummed and rustled with life through every street; not only with theEnglish troops, and many a Burgundian man-at-arms, swaggering about, swearing big oaths and filling the air with loud voices, --but with allthe polished bands of the doctors, men first in fame and learning ofthe famous University, and beneficed priests of all classes, canonsand deans and bishops, with the countless array that followed them, thecardinal's tonsured Court in addition, standing by and taking no sharein the business: but all French and English alike, occupied with onesubject, talking of the trial, of the new points brought out, of theopinions of this doctor and that, of Maître Nicolas who had presumed onhis lawyership to correct the bishop, and had suffered for it: of thebold canon who ventured to whisper a suggestion to the prisoner, and whoever since had had the eye of the governor upon him: of Warwick, keepinga rough shield of protection around the Maid but himself fiercelyimpatient of the law's delay, anxious to burn the witch and be done withher. And Jeanne herself, the one strange figure that nobody understood;was she a witch? Was she an angelic messenger? Her answers so simple, so bold, so full of the spirit and sentiment of truth, must have beenreported from one to another. This is what she said; does that look likea deceiver? could the devils inspire that steadfastness, that constancyand quiet? or was it not rather the angels, the saints as she said?Never, we may be sure, had there been in Rouen a time of so muchinterest, such a theme for conversations, such a subject for allthoughts. The eager court sat with their tonsured heads together, keento seize every weak point. Did you observe how she hesitated on this?Let us push that, we'll get an admission on that point to-morrow. It isimpossible to believe that in such an assembly every man was a partisan, much less that each one of them was thinking of the fee of the English, the daily allowance which it was the English habit to make. That were toimagine a France, base indeed beyond the limits of human baseness. Allthe Norman dignitaries of the Church, all the most learned doctorsof the University--no! that is too great a stretch of our faith. Thegreater part no doubt believed as an indisputable fact, that Jeanne waseither a witch or an impostor, as we should all probably do now. Andthe vertigo of Inquisition gained upon them; they became day by day moreexasperated with her seeming innocence, with what must have seemed tothem the cunning and cleverness, impossible to her age and sex, ofher replies. Who could have kept the girl so cool, so dauntless, soembarrassing in her straight-forwardness and sincerity? The saints? thesaints were not dialecticians; far more likely the evil one himself, inwhom the Church has always such faith. "He hath a devil and by Beelzebubcasteth out devils. " It was all like a play, only more exciting thanany play, and going on endlessly, the excitement always getting strongertill it became the chief stimulus and occupation of life. 

CHAPTER XIII -- THE PUBLIC EXAMINATION. FEBRUARY, 1431. 

It was in the chapel of the Castle of Rouen, on the 21st of February, that the trial of Jeanne was begun. The judges present numbered aboutforty, and are carefully classed as doctors in theology, abbots, canons, doctors in canonical and civil law, with the Bishop of Beauvais at theirhead (the archepiscopal see of Rouen being vacant, as is added: but notthat my lord of Beauvais hoped for that promotion). They were assembledthere in all the solemnity of their priestly and professional robes, the reporters ready with their pens, the range of dark figures forming asemicircle round the presiding Bishop, when the officer of the court ledin the prisoner, clothed in her worn and war-stained tunic, like a boy, with her hair cut close as for the helmet, and her slim figure, no doubtmore slim than ever, after her long imprisonment. She had asked to beallowed to hear mass before coming to the bar, but this was refused. Itwas a privilege which she had never failed to avail herself of in hermost triumphant days. Now the chapel--the sanctuary of God containedfor her no sacred sacrifice, but only those dark benches of priests amidwhom she found no responsive countenance, no look of kindness. 

Jeanne was addressed sternly by Cauchon, in an exhortation which it issad to think was not in Latin, as it appears in the _Procès_. She wasthen required to take the oath on the Scriptures to speak the truth, andto answer all questions addressed to her. Jeanne had already held thatconversation with L'Oyseleur in the prison which Cauchon and Warwick hadlistened to in secret with greedy ears, but which Manchon, the honestreporter, had refused to take down. Perhaps, therefore, the Bishop knewthat the slim creature before him, half boy half girl, was not likely tobe overawed by his presence or questions; but it cannot have been but awonder to the others, all gazing at her, the first men in Normandy, the most learned in Paris, to hear her voice, _assez femme_, young andclear, arising in the midst of them, "I know not what things I may beasked, " said Jeanne. "Perhaps you may ask me questions which I cannotanswer. " The assembly was startled by this beginning. 

"Will you swear to answer truly all that concerns the faith, and thatyou know?"

"I will swear, " said Jeanne, "about my father and mother and what I havedone since coming to France; but concerning my revelations from GodI will answer to no man, except only to Charles my King; I should notreveal them were you to cut off my head, unless by the secret counsel ofmy visions. "

The Bishop continued not without gentleness, enjoining her to swear atleast that in everything that touched the faith she would speak truth;and Jeanne kneeling down crossed her hands upon the book of the Gospel, or Missal as it is called in the report, and took the required oath, always under the condition she stated, to answer truly on everything sheknew concerning the faith, except in respect to her revelations. 

The examination then began with the usual formalities. She was asked hername (which she said with touching simplicity was Jeannette at home butJeanne in France), the names of her father and mother, godfather andgodmothers, the priest who baptised her, the place where she was born, etc. , her age, almost nineteen; her education, consisting of the PaterNoster, Ave Maria, and Credo, which her mother had taught her. 

Here she was asked, a curious interruption to the formal interrogatory, to say the Pater Noster--the reason of which sudden demand was thatwitches and sorcerers were supposed to be unable to repeat that prayer. As unexpected as the question was Jeanne's reply. She answered that ifthe Bishop would hear her in confession she would say it willingly. Shehad been refused all the exercises of piety, and she was speaking to acompany of priests. 

There is a great dignity of implied protest against this treatment insuch an answer. The request was made a second time with a promise ofselecting two worthy Frenchmen to hear her: but her reply was the same. She would say the prayer when she made her confession but not otherwise. She was ready it would seem in proud humility to confess to any orto all of her enemies, as one whose conscience was clear, and who hadnothing to conceal. 

She was then commanded not to attempt to escape from her prison, on painof being condemned for heresy, but to this again she demurred at once. She would not accept the prohibition, but would escape if she could, so that no man could say that she had broken faith; although since hercapture she had been bound in chains and her feet fastened with irons. To this, her examiner said that it was necessary so to secure her inorder that she might not escape. "It is true and certain, " she replied, "whatever others may wish, that to every prisoner it is lawful to escapeif he can. " It may be remarked, as she forcibly pointed out afterwards, that she had never given her faith, never surrendered, but had alwaysretained her freedom of action. 

The tribunal thereupon called in the captain in charge of Jeanne'sprison, a gentleman called John Gris in the record, probably John Grey, along with two soldiers, Bernoit and Talbot, and enjoined them to guardher securely and not to permit her to talk with any one without thepermission of the court. This was all the business done on the first dayof audience. 

On the 22d of February at eight o'clock in the morning, the sitting wasresumed. In the meantime, however, the chapel had been found too smalland too near the outer world, the proceedings being much interrupted byshouts and noises from without, and probably incommoded within by theaudience which had crowded it the first day. The judges accordinglyassembled in the great hall of the castle; they were forty-nine innumber on the second day, the number being chiefly swelled by canonsof Rouen. After some preliminary business the accused was once moreintroduced, and desired again to take the oath. Jeanne replied that shehad done so on the previous day and that this was enough; upon whichthere followed a short altercation, which, however, ended by her consentto swear again that she would answer truly in all things that concernedthe faith. The questioner this day was Jean Beaupère (_Pulchri patris_, as he is called in the Latin), a theologian, Master of Arts, Canon ofParis and of Besançon, "one of the greatest props of the University ofParis, " a man holding a number of important offices, and who afterwardsappeared at the Council of Bâle as the deputy of Normandy. He beganby another exhortation to speak the truth, to which Jeanne replied asbefore that what she did say she would say truly, but that she would notanswer upon all subjects. "I have done nothing but by revelation, " shesaid. 

These preliminaries on both sides having been gone through, theexamination was resumed. Jeanne informed the court in answer toBeaupère's question that she had been taught by her mother to sew anddid not fear to compete with any woman in Rouen in these crafts; thatshe had once been absent from home when her family were driven out oftheir village by fear of the Burgundians, and that she had then livedfor about fifteen days in the house of a woman called La Rousse, atNeufchâteau; that when she was at home she was occupied in the work ofthe house and did not go to the fields with the sheep and other animals;that she went to confession regularly to the Curé of her own village, orwhen he could not hear her, to some other priest, by permission of theCuré; also that two or three times she had made her confession to themendicant friars--this being during her stay in Neufchâteau (wherepresumably she was not acquainted with the clergy); and that shereceived the sacrament always at Easter. Asked whether she hadcommunicated at other feasts than Easter, she said briefly that thiswas enough. "Go on to the rest, " _passez outre_, she added, and thequestioner seems to have been satisfied. Then came the really vitalpart of the matter. She proceeded--no direct question on the point beingrecorded, though no doubt it was made--to tell how when she was aboutthirteen she heard voices from God bidding her to be good and obedient. The first time she was much afraid. The voice came about the hour ofnoon, in summer, in her father's garden. She was fasting but had notfasted the preceding day. The voice came from the right, towards thechurch; and came rarely without a great light. This light came alwaysfrom the side whence the voice proceeded, and was a very brightradiance. When she came into France she still continued to hear the samevoices. 

She was then asked how she could see the light when it was at the side;to which foolish question Jeanne gave no reply, but "turned to othermatters, " saying voluntarily with a soft implied reproof of the noisearound her--that if she were in a wood, that is in a quiet place, shecould hear the voices coming towards her. She added (going on, one couldimagine, in a musing, forgetting the congregation of sinners about her)that it seemed to her a noble voice, and that she believed it came fromGod, and that when she had heard it three times she knew it was thevoice of an angel; the voice always came quite clearly to her, and sheunderstood it well. 

She was then asked what it said to her concerning the salvation of hersoul. 

She said that it taught her to rule her life well, to go often tochurch: and told her that it was necessary that she, Jeanne, shouldgo to France. The said Jeanne added that she would not be questionedfurther concerning the voice, or the manner in which it was made knownto her, but that two or three times in a week it had said to her thatshe must go to France; but that her father knew nothing of this. Thevoice said to her that she should go to France, until she could endureit no longer; it said to her that she should raise the siege, which wasset against the city of Orleans. It said also that she must go to Robertof Baudricourt, in the city of Vaucouleurs, who was captain of thatplace, and that he would give her people to go with her; to which shehad answered that she was a poor girl who knew not how to ride, nor howto conduct war. She then said that she went to her uncle and told himthat she wished to go with him for a little while to his house, and thatshe lived there for eight days; she then told her uncle that she must goto Vaucouleurs, and the said uncle took her there. Also she went on tosay that when she came to the said city of Vaucouleurs, she recognisedRobert of Baudricourt; though she had never seen him before she knew himby the voice that said to her which was he. She then told this Robertthat it was necessary that she should go to France, but twice over herefused and repulsed her; the third time, however, he received her, andgave her certain men to go with her; the voice had told her that thiswould be so. 

She said also that the Duke of Lorraine sent for her to come to him, andthat she went under a safe conduct granted by him, and told him thatshe must go to France. He asked her whether he should recover from hisillness; but she told him that she knew nothing of that, and she talkedvery little to him of her journey. She told the Duke that he ought tosend his son and his people with her to take her to France, and thatshe would pray God to restore his health; and then she was taken back toVaucouleurs. She said also that when she left Vaucouleurs she wore thedress of a man, without any other arms than a sword which Robert deBaudricourt had given her; and that she had with her a chevalier, asquire, and four servants, and that they slept for the first night atSt. Urbain, in the abbey there. She was then asked by whose advice shewore the dress of a man, but refused to answer. Finally she said thatshe charged no man with giving her this advice. 

She went on to say that the said Robert de Baudricourt exacted an oathfrom those who went with her, that they would conduct her to the end ofher journey well and safely; and that he said, as she left him, "Go, andlet come what will. " She also said that she knew well that God loved theDuke of Orleans, concerning whom she had more revelations than about anyother living man, except him whom she called her King. She added that itwas necessary for her to wear male attire, and that whoever advised herto do so had given her wise counsel. 

She then said that she sent a letter to the English before Orleans, inwhich she required them to go away, a copy of which letter had been readto her in Rouen; but there were two or three mistakes, especially inthe words which called upon them to surrender to the Maid instead ofto surrender to the King. (There is no indication why these two latterstatements should have been introduced into the midst of her narrativeof the journey; it may have been in reply to some other questioninterjected by another of her examiners: _Passez outre_, as she herselfsays. She immediately resumes the simple and straightforward tale. )

The said Jeanne went on to say that her further journey to him whom shecalled her King was without any impediment; and that when she arrivedat the town of St. Catherine de Fierbois she sent news of her arrival tothe town of Chasteau-Chinon where the said King was. She arrived thereherself about noon and went to an inn(1); and after dinner went to himwhom she called her King, who was in the castle. She then said that whenshe entered the chamber where he was, she knew him among all others, by the revelation of her "voices. " She told her King that she wished tomake war against the English. 

She was then asked whether when she heard the "voices" in the presenceof the King the light was also seen in that place. She answered asbefore: _Passez outre: Transeatis ultra_. "Go on, " as we might say, "tothe other questions. "

She was asked if she had seen an angel hovering over her King. Sheanswered: "Spare me; _passez outre_. " She added afterwards, however, that before he put his hand to the work, the King had many beautifulapparitions and revelations. She was asked what these were. Sheanswered: "I will not tell you; it is not I who should answer; send tothe King and he will tell you. "

She was then asked if her voices had promised her that when she came tothe King he would receive her. She answered that those of her ownparty knew that she had been sent from God and that some had heardand recognised the voices. Further, she said that her King and variousothers had heard and seen(2) the voices coming to her--Charles ofBourbon (Comte de Clermont) and two or three others with him. She thensaid that there was no day in which she did not hear that voice; butthat she asked nothing from it except the salvation of her soul. Besidesthis, Jeanne confessed that the voice said she should be led to the townof St. Denis in France, where she wished to remain--that is after theattack on Paris--but that against her will the lords forced her to leaveit: if she had not been wounded she would not have gone: but she waswounded in the moats of Paris: however she was healed in five days. Shethen said that she had made an assault, called in French _escarmouche_(skirmish), upon the town of Paris. She was asked if it was on a holyday, and said that she believed it was on a festival. She was thenasked if she thought it well done to fight on a holy day, and answered, "_Passez outre_. " Go on to the next question. 

This is a verbatim account of one day of the trial. Most of thetranslations which exist give questions as well as answers: but theseare but occasionally given in the original document, and Jeanne'snarrative reads like a calm, continuous statement, only interrupted nowand then by a question, usually a cunning attempt to startle her witha new subject, and to hurry some admission from her. The great dignitywith which she makes her replies, the occasional flash of high spirit, the calm determination with which she refuses to be led into discussionof the subjects which she had from the first moment reserved, are veryremarkable. We have seen her hitherto only in conflict, in the din ofbattle and the fatigue, yet exuberant energy, of rapid journeys. Hercircumstances were now very different. She had been shut up in prisonfor months, for six weeks at least she had been in irons, and the airof heaven had not blown upon this daughter of the fields; her robust yetsensitive maidenhood had been exposed to a hundred offences, and to theconstant society, infecting the very air about, of the rudest of men;yet so far is her spirit from being broken that she meets all thosepotent, grave, and reverend doctors and ecclesiastics, with thesimplicity and freedom of a princess, answering frankly or holdingher peace as seems good to her, afraid of nothing, keeping herself-possession, all her wits about her as we say, without panicand without presumption. The trial of Jeanne is indeed almost moremiraculous than her fighting; a girl not yet nineteen, forsaken of all, without a friend! It is less wonderful that she should have developedthe qualities of a general, of a gunner, every gift of war--than that inher humiliation and distress she should thus hold head against allthe most subtle intellects in France, and bear, with but one moment offaltering, a continued cross-examination of three months, without losingher patience, her heart, or her courage. 

*****

The third day brought a still larger accession of judges, sixty-two ofthem taking their places on the benches round the Bishop in the greathall; and the day began with another and longer altercation betweenCauchon and Jeanne on the subject of the oath again demanded of her. Shemaintained her resolution to say nothing of her voices. "We" accordingto the record "required of her that she should swear simply andabsolutely without reservation. " She would seem to have replied withimpatience, "Let me speak freely:" adding "By my faith you may ask memany questions which I will not answer": then explaining, "Many thingsyou may ask me, but I will tell you nothing truly that concerns myrevelations; for you might compel me to say things which I have swornnot to say; and so I should perjure myself, which you ought not towish. " This explains several statements which she made later in respectto her introduction to the King. She repeated emphatically: "I warnyou well, you who call yourselves my judges, that you take a greatresponsibility upon you, and that you burden me too much. " She said alsothat it was enough to have already sworn twice. She was again asked toswear simply and absolutely, and answered, "It is enough to have sworntwice, " and that all the clerks in Rouen and Paris could not condemn herunless lawfully; also that of her coming she would speak the truth butnot all the truth; and that the space of eight days would not be enoughto tell all. 

"We the said Bishop" (continues the report) "then said to her that sheshould ask advice from those present whether she ought to swear ornot. She replied again that of her coming she would speak truly and nototherwise, nor would it be fit that she should talk at large. We thentold her that it would throw suspicion on what she said if she did notswear to speak the truth. She answered as before. We repeated that shemust swear precisely and absolutely. She answered that she would saywhat she knew, but not all, and that she had come on the part of God, and appealed to God from whom she came. Again requested and admonishedto swear on pain of every punishment that could be put on her, againanswered '_Passez outre_. ' Finally she consented to swear that she wouldspeak the truth in everything that concerned the trial. "

Her examination was then resumed by Beaupère as before, who elicitedfrom her that she had fasted (he seems to have wished to make out thatthe fasting had something to do with her visions) since noon the daybefore (it was Lent); and also that she had heard her voices both onthat day and the day before, three times on the previous day, the firsttime in the morning when she was asleep, and awakened by them. Did shekneel and thank them? She thanked them, sitting up in her bed (to whichshe was chained, as her questioner knew) and clasping her hands. Sheasked them what she was to do, and they told her to answer boldly. 

It may be remarked here that more frequently as the examination goeson, part of Jeanne's words are quoted in the first person, as if thereporters had been specially struck by them, while the bulk of herevidence goes on more calmly in the third person, the narrative form. After saying that she was bidden to answer boldly, she seems to haveturned to the Bishop, and to have addressed him individually: "You sayyou are my judge; I warn you to take care what you are doing, for Iam sent from God, and you are putting yourself in much peril" (_magnopericulo: gallice_, adds the reporter, _en grant dangier_). 

She was then asked if her voices ever changed their meaning, andanswered that she had never heard two speak contrary to each other; whatthey had said that day was that she should speak boldly. Asked, if thevoice forbade her to reply to questions asked, she replied; "I will notanswer you. I have revelations touching the King which I will not tellyou. " Asked, if the voices forbade her to reveal these revelations, sheanswered, "I have not consulted them; give me fifteen days' delay and Iwill answer you"; but being again exhorted to reply, said: "If the voiceforbade me to speak, how many times should I tell you?" Again asked, ifshe were forbidden to speak, answered, "I believe I am not forbiddenby men"--repeating that she would not reply, and knew not how far sheshould reply, for it had not been revealed to her; but that she believedfirmly, as firmly as the Christian faith, and that God had redeemed usfrom the pains of hell, that this voice came from Him. 

Questioned concerning the voice, what it appeared to be when it spoke, if that of an angel, or from God Himself; or if it was the voice of asaint or of saints (feminine), answered: "The voice comes from God; andI believe that I should not tell you all I know, for I should displeasethese voices if I answered you; and as for this question I pray youto leave me free. " Asked if she thought that to speak the truth woulddisplease God, she answered, "What the voices say I am to tell to theKing, not to you, " adding that during that night they had said much toher for the good of the King, and that if she could but let him knowshe would willingly drink no wine up to Easter (the reader will rememberthat her frugal fare consisted of bread dipped in the wine and water, which is justly called _eau rougie_ in France). Asked, if she could notinduce the voices to speak to her King directly, she answered that sheknew not whether her voices would consent, unless it were the will ofGod, and God consented to it, adding, "They might well reveal it to theKing; and with that I should be content. " Asked, if the voices couldnot communicate with the King as they did in her presence, she answered, that she did not know whether this was God's will; and added, thatunless it were the will of God she would not know how to act. Asked, ifit was by the advice of her voices that she attempted to escape fromher prison, she answered, "I have nothing to say to you on that point. "Asked, if she always saw a light when the voices were heard, sheanswered: "Yes: that with the sound of the voices light came. " Asked ifshe saw anything else coming with the voices, answered: "I do not tellyou all. I am not allowed to do so, nor does my oath touch that; thevoices are good and noble, but neither of that will I answer. " She wasthen asked to give in writing the points on which she would not reply. Then she was asked if her voices had eyes and ears, and answered, "Youshall not have this either, " adding, that it was a saying among childrenthat men were sometimes hanged for speaking the truth. 

She was then asked if she knew herself to be in the grace of God. Shereplied: "If I am not so, may God put me in His grace; if I am, may Godkeep me in it. I should be the most miserable in the world if I were notin the grace of God. " She said besides, that if she were in a state ofsin she did not believe her voices would come to her, and she wishedthat everyone could understand them as she did, adding, that she wasabout thirteen when they came to her first. 

She was then asked, whether in her childhood she had played with theother children in the fields, and various other particulars aboutDomremy, whether there were any Burgundians there? to which Jeanneanswered boldly that there was one, and that she wished his head mightbe cut off, adding piously, "that is, if it pleased God"(3); she wasalso asked whether she had fought along with the other children againstthe children of the neighbouring Burgundian village of Maxy (Maxey surMeuse): why she hated the Burgundians, and many questions of thiskind, with a close examination about a certain tree near the village ofDomremy, which some called the Tree of the good Ladies, and others, theFairies' Tree; and also about a well there, the Fairies' Well, of whichpoor patients were said to drink and get well. Jeanne (no doubt relievedby the simple character of these questions) made answer freely andwithout hesitation, in no way denying that she had danced and sung withthe other children, and made garlands for the image of the Blessed Marieof Domremy; but she did not remember whether she had ever done so afterattaining years of discretion, and certainly she had never seen a fairy, nor worked any spell by their means. At the end, after having thus beenput off her guard, she was suddenly asked about her dress (a capitalpoint in the eyes of her judges): whether she wished to have a woman'sdress. Probably she was, as they hoped, tired, and expecting no suchquestion, for she answered quickly yet with instant recovery: "Bringme one to go home in and I will accept it; otherwise no. I prefer this, since it pleases God that I should wear it. " The recollection of Domremyand of the pleasant fields, must have carried her back to the days whenthe little Jeanne was like the rest in her short, full petticoats ofcrimson stuff, free of any danger: what could be better to go home in?but she immediately remembered the obvious and excellent reasons she hadfor wearing another costume now. So ended the third day. 

In the meantime there had been, we are told, various interruptionsduring the examination; perhaps it was then that Nicolas de Houppevilleprotested against Bishop Cauchon as a partisan and a Burgundian, andtherefore incapable by law of judging a member of the opposite party:and had been rudely silenced, and afterwards punished, as we havealready heard. Another kind of opposition less bold had begun to beremarked, which was that one of the persons present, by word and sign, whispering suggestions to her, or warning her with his eyes, was helpingthe unfortunate prisoner in her defence. Probably this did little good, "for she was often troubled and hurried in her answers, " we are told;but it was a sign of good-will, at least. When Frère Isambard, who wasthe person in question, speaks at a later period he tells us that "thequestions put to Jeanne were too difficult, subtle, and dangerous, sothat the great clerks and learned men who were present scarcely wouldhave known how to answer them, and that many in the assembly murmuredat them. " Perhaps the good Frère Isambard might have spared himself thetrouble; for Jeanne, however she may have suffered, was probably moreable to hold her own than many of those great clerks, and did so withunfailing courage and spirit. One of the other judges, Jean Fabry, abishop, declared afterwards that "her answers were so good, that forthree weeks he believed that they were inspired. " Manchon, the reporter, he who had refused to take down the private conversation of Jeanne inher prison with the vile traitor, L'Oyseleur, makes his voice heard alsoto the effect that "Monseigneur of Beauvais would have had everythingwritten as pleased him, and when there was anything that displeased himhe forbade the secretaries to report it as being of no importance forthe trial. " On another day a humbler witness still, Massieu, one of theofficers of the court, who had the charge of taking Jeanne dailyfrom her prison to the hall, and back again, met in the courtyard anEnglishman, who seems to have been a singing man or lay clerk "ofthe King's chapel in England, " probably attached to Winchester'secclesiastical retinue. This man asked him: "What do you think of heranswers? Will she be burned? What will happen?" "Up to this time, " saidMassieu, "I have heard nothing from her that was not honourable andgood. She seems to me a good woman, but how it will all end God onlyknows!"

No doubt conversations of this kind were being carried on all overRouen. Would she be burned? What would happen? Could any one stand andanswer like that hour after hour and day by day, inspired only by thedevil? There was no popular enthusiasm for her even now. How shouldthere have been in that partisan province, more English than French? Buta chill doubt began to steal into many minds whether she was so bad ashad been thought, whether indeed she might not after all be somethingquite different from what she had been thought? Nature had begun to workin the agitated place, and even in that black-robed, eager assembly. Ifthere was a vile L'Oyseleur trying to get her confidence in private, andso betray her, there was also a kind Frère Isambard, privately pluckingat her sleeve, imploring her to be cautious, whispering an answerprobably not half so wise as her own natural reply, yet warming herheart with the suggestion of a friend at hand. 

On the fourth day, Jeanne was again required to swear, and replied asbefore, that so far as concerned the trial she would answer truly, but not all she knew. "You ought to be satisfied: I have swornsufficiently, " she said; and with this her judges seem to have beencontent. Beaupère then resumed his questions, but first asked her, perhaps with a momentary gleam of compassion and a sudden consciousnessof the pallor and weariness of the young prisoner, how she did. Sheanswered, one can imagine with what tone of indignant disdain: "You seehow I am: I am as well as I can be. " He then cross-examined her closelyas to what voices she had heard since her last appearance in court, but drew from her only the same answer, "The voice tells me to answerboldly, " and that she would tell them as much as she was permitted byGod to tell them, but concerning her revelations for the King of Franceshe would say nothing except by permission of her voices. 

She was then asked what kind of voices they were which she heard, werethey voices of angels, or of saints (_sancti aut sanctæ_, male or femalesaints) or from God Himself? She answered that the voices were those ofSt. Catherine and St. Margaret, whose heads were crowned with beautifulcrowns, very rich and precious. "So much as this God allows me to say. If you doubt send to Poitiers, where I was questioned before. " (It mayperhaps be permissible to suppose that the kind whisperer at her elbowmight have suggested the repeated references to Poitiers that follow, but which are not to be found before: though it was most natural sheshould refer to this place where she was examined at the beginning ofher mission. ) Asked how she knew which of these two saints, she answeredthat she could quite distinguish one from the other by the manner oftheir salutation; that she had been led and guided by them for sevenyears, and that she knew them because they had named themselves to her. She was then asked how they were dressed? and answered: "I cannot tellyou; I am not permitted to reveal this; if you do not believe me send toPoitiers. " She said also that at her coming into France she had revealedthese things, but could not now. She was asked what was the age of hersaints, but replied that she was not permitted to tell. Asked, if bothsaints spoke at once or one after the other, she replied: "I have notpermission to tell you: but I always consult them both together. " Asked, which had appeared to her first, and answered: "I do not know which itwas; I did know, but have forgotten. It is written in the register ofPoitiers. "

"She then said she had much comfort from St. Michael. Again, asked, which had come first, she replied that it was St. Michael. Asked, ifa long time had passed since she first heard the voice of St. Michael, answered: "I do not name to you the voice of St. Michael; but hisconversation was of great comfort to me. " Asked, again, what voice camefirst to her when she was thirteen, answered, that it was St. Michaelwhom she saw before her eyes, and that he was not alone, but accompaniedby many angels of Heaven. She said also that she would not have comeinto France but by the command of God. Asked, if she saw St. Michael andthe angels really, with her ordinary senses, she answered: "I saw themwith my bodily eyes as I see you, and when they left me I wept, desiringmuch that they would take me with them. " Asked, what was the formin which he appeared, she replied: "I cannot answer you; I am notpermitted. " Asked, what St. Michael said to her the first time, shecried, "You shall have no answer to-day. " Then went on to say that hervoices told her to reply boldly. Afterwards she said that she had toldher King once all that had been revealed to her; said also that she wasnot permitted to say here what St. Michael had said; but that it wouldbe better to send for a copy of the books which were at Poitiers than toquestion her on this subject. Asked, what sign she had that thesewere revelations of God, and that it was really St. Catherine and St. Margaret with whom she talked, she answered: "It is enough that I tellyou they were St. Catherine and St. Margaret: believe me or not as youwill. "

Asked how she distinguished the points on which she was allowed tospeak from the others, she answered, that on some points she had askedpermission to speak, and not on others, adding, that she would ratherhave been torn by wild horses than to have come to France, unless bythe license of God. Asked how it was that she put on a man's dress, sheanswered, that dress appeared to her a small matter, that she did notadopt that dress by the counsel of any man, and that she neither put ona dress nor did anything, but according as God, or the angels, commandedher to do so. Asked, if she knew whether such a command to assume thedress of a man was lawful, she answered: "All that I did, I did by theprecepts of our Lord; and if I were bidden to wear another dress I woulddo so, because it was at the bidding of God. " Asked, if she had doneit by the orders of Robert de Baudricourt, answered "No. " Asked, if shethought that she had done well in assuming a man's dress, answered, thatas all she did was by the command of the Lord, she believed that she haddone well, and expected a good guarantee and good succour. Asked, if inthis particular case of assuming the dress of a man she thought she haddone well, answered, that nothing in the world had made her do it, butthe command of God. 

She was then asked whether light always accompanied the voices whenthey came to her, she answered, with an evident reference to her firstinterview with Charles, that there were many lights on every side as wasfit. "It is not only to you that light comes" (or you have not all thelight to yourself, --a curious phrase). Asked, if there was an angel overthe head of the King when she saw him for the first time, she answered:"By the Blessed Mary, if there were, I know not, I saw none. " Asked, ifthere was light, she answered: "There were about three hundred soldiers, and fifty of them held torches, without counting any spiritual light. And rarely do I have the revelations without light. " Asked, if her Kinghad faith in what she said, she answered, that he had good signs, andalso by his clergy. Asked, what revelations her King had, she answered:"You shall have nothing from me this year. " Then added that for threeweeks she was cross-examined by the clergy, both in the town of Chinonand at Poitiers, and that her King had signs concerning her, before hebelieved in her. And the clergy of his party had found nothing in her, in respect to her faith, that was not good. Asked, whether she gone tothe church of St. Catherine of Fierbois, answered: "yes, " and that shehad there heard three masses in one day, and from thence went to Chinon;she added that she had sent a letter thence to the King, in which it wascontained that she sent this to know if she might come to the townin which the King was; for that she had travelled a hundred and fiftyleagues to come to him and to bring him help, for she knew much goodconcerning him. And she thought it was contained in this letter that sheshould recognise the King among all the rest. 

She said besides, that she had a sword which was given to her atVaucouleurs; she said also that, being in Tours or at Chinon, she sentfor a sword which was in the church of St. Catherine of Fierbois behindthe altar, and that when it was found it was rusty. Asked, how she knewabout this sword, she answered, that it was rusty because of being inthe ground, and there were five crosses on it, and that she knew thissword by her voices, and not by any man's report. She wrote to theecclesiastics of the place where it was and asked them for this sword, and they sent it to her. It was found not much below the ground behindthe altar; she was not sure if it was before or behind the altar, butwrote that it was behind the altar. And when it was found the clergycleaned it and rubbed off the rust, which came off easily; and it was anarmourer of Tours who went to fetch it. The clergy made a scabbard forit before sending it to the said Jeanne, and they of Tours made another, so that it had two scabbards, one of crimson velvet and one of cloth ofgold. And she herself procured another of strong leather. She said alsothat when she was captured she had not that sword. Said also that shecontinued to wear the said sword until she left St. Denis after theassault on Paris. Asked, what benediction she made, or if she made anyon this sword, she answered, that she made no benediction, nor knew howto make one, but that she loved the sword because it had come to herfrom the Church of the blessed Catherine whom she loved much. Asked, if she had placed it on the altar at the village of Coulenges, LesVineuses, or elsewhere, placing it there that it might bring good luck, she answered, that she knew nothing of this. Asked, if she did not praythat the sword might have good fortune: "It is good to know that Iwish all my armour (_harnesseum meum; gallice, mon harnois_) to be veryfortunate. " Asked, where she had left the sword, answered, that she haddeposited a sword and armour at St. Denis, but it was not this sword. She added that she had it in Lagny: but that she afterwards wore thesword which had been taken from a Burgundian, which was a good swordfor war and gave good strokes (_gallice, de bonnes bouffes_ and _de bonstorchons_). Said also that to tell where she left it had nothing to dowith the trial, and she would answer nothing. 

She said also that her brothers had everything that belonged to her, herhorses, swords, and everything, and that she believed they were worthin all about 12, 000 francs. She was also asked whether when she was atOrleans she had a standard, and what colour it was; answered, that shehad a standard, the field of which was sown with lilies, and on it was afigure of the world with angels on each side. It was white, and madeof a stuff called boucassin, upon which was written the name _JhesusMaria_, so that all might see, and it was fringed with silk. Asked, ifthe name _Jhesus Maria_ was written above or below or at the side, sheanswered, "At the side. " Asked, if she loved her sword or standard best, she answered, that she loved her standard best. Asked, why she had thatpicture on the standard, she answered: "I have sufficiently told youthat I did nothing but by the command of God. " She added that sheherself carried her standard when in battle that she might not hurtanyone, and said that she had never killed any man. 

Asked, how many men her King gave her when she began her work, answered, from ten to twelve(4) thousand men, and that she attacked first thebastile of St. Loup at Orleans, and afterwards that of the bridge. Asked, from which bastile it was that her men were driven back, sheanswered, that she did not remember; adding, that she had been sure thatshe could raise the siege at Orleans, for it had been so revealed toher; and that she told this to her King before it occurred. Asked, whether, when she made assault, she told her men that all the arrows, stones, cannon-balls, etc. , would be intercepted by her, she answeredno--that more than a hundred were wounded: that what she had said to herpeople was that they should have no doubts, for they should certainlyraise the siege of Orleans. She said also that in attacking the bastileof the bridge she herself was wounded by an arrow in the neck, and wasmuch comforted by St. Catherine, and was healed in fifteen days; butthat she never gave up riding and working all that time. Asked, if sheknew that she would be wounded, she answered, that she knew it welland had told her King, but that, notwithstanding, she went about herbusiness. It was revealed to her by the voices of her two saints, theblessed Catherine and the blessed Margaret. She said besides, that shewas the first to place a scaling ladder on the bastile of the bridge, and as she raised it she was struck in the neck. 

She was then asked why she did not treat with the Captain of Jargeau;she answered that the lords of her party had replied to the English, whohad asked for a truce of fifteen days, that they could not have it, butthat they might retire, they and their horses at once; she had said forher part that if they retired in their doublets and tunics their livesshould be spared, otherwise the city would be taken by storm. Asked, ifshe had consulted with her counsel, that is with her voices, whether thetruce should be granted or not, she answered, that she did not remember. 

It will be remarked, as the slow examination goes on day after day, thatJeanne, becoming at moments impatient, sometimes gives a rough answer, and at other times plays a little with her questioner as if incontempt. "By the Blessed Mary, I know not!" is evidently an outburstof impatience at the exhausting, exasperating folly of some of thesequestions, and this will be further visible in future sittings. Itseems very likely that the reference to Poitiers, which was an excellentsuggestion, commending itself to her invariable good sense, came fromthe kind priest who tried to serve her as he best could; but there areother answers a little incoherent, which look as if Frère Isambard, if it were he, had confused her in her own response without conveyinganything better to her mind, especially on the occasions when sherefuses to reply, and then does so, abandoning her ground at once. Herpatience and steadiness are quite extraordinary however even in the lessself-collected moments. Thus end the proceedings of the fourth day. 

*****

The fifth day began with the usual dispute about the oath, Jeannestill retaining her reservation with the greatest firmness. She seems, however, at the end, to have repeated her oath to answer everything thathad to do with the trial--"And as much as I say I will say as if Iwere before the Pope of Rome. " These words must have given the MagisterBeaupère an admirable occasion for introducing one of the things chargedagainst her for which there was actual proof--her letter to the Comted'Armagnac in respect to the Pope. He seized upon it evidently witheagerness, and asked her which she held to be the true Pope. To this sheanswered quietly, "Are there two?"--the most confusing reply. (5)

She was asked if she had received letters from the Comte d'Armagnac, asking to know which of the three existing Popes he ought to obey; sheanswered that she had his letter, and had replied to it, saying amongother things that when she was in Paris and at rest she would answerhim; and added that she was on the point of mounting her horse when shegave that reply. The copy of the letter and the reply being read to hershe was asked if that was what she had said; to which she replied thatshe had answered his letter in part, not in full. Asked, if she knew thecounsels of the King of Kings so as to be able to say which the countshould obey, she answered, that she knew nothing. Asked, if she was indoubt as to which the count ought to obey, she replied that she knew notwhich to bid him obey; but that she, the said Jeanne, held and believedthat we ought to obey our Pope who was in Rome; that as for what heasked, that she should tell him which God desired him to obey, she hadsaid she knew nothing; but she sent much to him which was not put inwriting. And as for herself she believed in the Lord Pope of Rome. Asked, whether in respect to the three pontiffs she had receivedcounsel, she answered, that she had neither written nor made to bewritten anything about the three pontiffs. And this she swore on heroath. Asked, if she were in the habit of putting on her letters the name_Jhesus Maria_ with a cross, answered, that she did so sometimes but notalways, and that sometimes she put a cross to shew that these letterswere not to be taken seriously (as likely to fall into the enemy'shands). 

Some questions were then put to her about her letters to the Duke ofBedford and to the English King, and copies were read to her to whichshe objected on some small points, but mistakenly it would seem, as thatshe had summoned them to surrender to the King, while the scribe had put"surrender to the Maid. " She said, however, that they were her letters, and that she held by them. She added that before seven years the Englishwould lose more than they had lost at Orleans, (6) and that their causewould be lost in France; she said also that the said English should havegreater disasters than they had yet had in France, and that God wouldgive greater victories to France. Asked, how she knew this, she replied:"I know it by the revelations made to me, and that it will happen inseven years, and I might well be angry that it is deferred so long. "Asked, when this would happen, she said that she knew neither the daynor the hour. 

She was tormented a little further as to the dates, whether this wouldhappen before the St. Jean, or before the St. Martin in winter, but madeno answer except that before the St. Martin in winter they should seemany things, and it might be that the English should fail; as a matterof fact Paris opened its gates to Charles VII. Within the seven yearsspecified, so that Jeanne's prophecy may be held to have been fulfilled. 

We then come once more to a long and profitless interrogatory uponher saints, in which the crowd of judges forgot their dignity andoverwhelmed her with a flood of often very foolish, and sometimes worsethan foolish questions. 

Asked, how she knew the future, she answered that she knew it by St. Catherine and St. Margaret; asked, if St. Gabriel was with St. Michaelwhen he came to her, she answered, that she could not remember. Asked, if she saw them always in the same dress, answered yes, and they werecrowned very richly. Of their other garments she could not speak; sheknew nothing of their tunics. Asked, how she knew whether they were menor women, answered, that she knew well by their voices which revealedthem to her; and that she knew nothing save by revelation and theprecepts of God. Asked, what appearances she saw, she answered, that shesaw faces. Asked, if these saints had hair, she answered, "It is good toknow. " Asked, if there was anything between their crowns and their hair, answered, no. Asked, if their hair was long and hanging down, answered, "I know nothing about it. " She also said that their voices werebeautiful sweet, and humble, and that she understood them well. Asked, how they could speak when they had no bodies, she answered, "I refer itto God. " She repeated that the voices were beautiful, humble, and sweet, and that they could speak French. Asked, if St. Margaret did not speakEnglish, answered: "How could she speak English when she was not on theEnglish side?"

This would seem to infer that the St. Margaret referred to was not thelegendary St. Margaret of the dragon, but St. Margaret of Scotland, wellknown in France from the long connection between those two countries, and a popular mediæval saint. She would naturally have spoken English, being a Saxon, but also quite naturally would have been against theEnglish, as a Scottish queen; but of these refinements it is veryunlikely that Jeanne knew anything, and her prompt and somewhat sharpreply evidently cut the inquiry short. The next question was, did theywear gold rings in their ears or elsewhere, these crowned saints; towhich she answered a little contemptuously, "I know nothing about it. "She was then asked if she herself had rings: on which "turning to us theaforesaid Bishop, she said, 'You have one of mine; give it back to me. 'She then said that the Burgundians had her other ring, and asked of usif we had the ring to shew it to her. Asked, who gave her this ring, answered, her father or her mother, and that the name _Jhesus Maria_was written upon it, but that she knew not who put it there, nor evenwhether there was a stone in the ring; it was given to her in thevillage of Domremy. She added that her brother gave her another ringwhich we had, and said that she desired that it might be given to theChurch. "

A sudden change was now made in the cross-examination according to themethods of that operation, throwing her back without warning upon thevillage superstitions of Domremy, the magic tree and fountain. Many ofthe questions which follow are so trivial and are so evidently instinctwith evil meaning, that it seems a wrong to Beaupère to impute the wholeof the interrogatory to him; other questions were evidently interposedby the excited assembly. 

Asked, if St. Catherine and St. Margaret talked with her under the treeof which mention had been made above, she answered, "I know nothingabout it. " Asked, if the saints were seen at the fountain near thetree, answered yes, that she had heard them there; but what her saintspromised to her, there or elsewhere, she answered, that nothing waspromised except by permission from God. Asked, what promises were madeto her, she answered, "This has nothing at all to do with your trial, "but added, that among other things they said to her that her Kingshould be restored to his kingdom, and that his adversaries shouldbe destroyed. She said also that they promised to take her, the saidJeanne, to Paradise, as she had asked them to do. Asked, if she had anyother promises, she said there was one promise that had nothing to dowith the trial, but that in three months she would tell them what thatother promise was. Asked, if the voices told her she would be set freefrom her prison in three months, she answered: "This does not concernyour trial; nor do I know when I shall be set free. " And she added thatthose who wished to send her out of this world might well go before her. Asked, if her council did not tell her when she should be set free fromher present prison, answered: "Ask me this in three months' time; I canpromise you as much as that"--but added: "You may ask those present, ontheir oaths, if this has anything to do with the trial. "

Startled by this suggestion, the judges seem to have held a hurriedconsultation among themselves to see whether these matters did reallytouch the trial; the result apparently decided them to return again tothe question of the local superstitions of Domremy, the only point onwhich there seemed a chance of breaking down the extraordinarily justand steadfast intelligence of the girl who stood before them. After thispause she resumed, apparently not in answer to any question. 

"I have well told you that there were things you should not know, andsome time I must needs be set free. But I must have permission if Ispeak; therefore I will ask to have delay in this. " Asked, if her voicesforbade her to speak the truth, she said: "Do you expect me to tell youthings that concern the King of France? There is a great deal here thathas nothing to do with the trial. " She said also that she knew that herKing should enjoy the kingdom of France, as well as she knew that theywere there before her in judgment. She added that she would have beendead but for the revelations which comforted her daily. She was thenasked what she had done with her mandragora (mandrake)? she answeredthat she had no mandragora, nor had ever had. She had heard say thatnear her village there was one, but had never seen it. She had heard saythat it was a dangerous thing, and that it was wicked to keep it; butknew nothing of its use. Asked, in what place this mandrake was, andwhat she had heard of it? she said that she had heard that it grew underthe tree of which mention has been made, but did not know the place; shesaid also that she had heard that above the mandragora was a hazel tree. Asked, what she heard was done with the mandragora, answered, that shehad heard that it brought money, but did not believe it; and added thather voices had never told her anything about it. 

Asked, what was the appearance of St. Michael when she saw him first, she answered, that she saw no crown, and knew nothing of his dress. Asked, if he was naked, she answered, "Do you think God has nothing toclothe him with?" Asked, if he had hair, she answered, "Why shouldit have been cut?" She said further that she had not seen the blessedMichael since she left the castle of Crotoy, nor did she see him often. At last she said that she knew not whether he had hair or not. Asked, whether he carried scales, she answered, "I know nothing of it, " butadded that she had much joy in seeing him, and she knew when she saw himthat she was not in a state of sin. She also said that St. Catherine andSt. Margaret often made her confess to them, and said that if she hadbeen in a state of sin it was without knowing it. She was then askedwhether, when she confessed, she believed herself to be in a state ofmortal sin; she answered, that she knew not whether she had been in thatstate, but did not believe she had done the works of sin. "It would nothave pleased God, " she said, "that I should have been so; nor would ithave pleased Him that I should have done the works of sin by which mysoul should have been burdened. "

She was then asked what sign she gave to the King that she came to himfrom God; she answered: "I have told you always that nothing should drawthis from me. (7) Ask me no more. " Asked, if she had not sworn to revealwhat was asked of her touching the trial, answered, "I have told youthat I will tell you nothing that was for our King; and of this whichbelongs to him I will not speak. " Asked, if she knew the sign which shegave to the King, she answered: "You shall know nothing from me. " Whenit was said to her that this did concern the trial, she answered, "Ofthat which I have promised to keep secret I shall tell you nothing";and further she said, "I promised in that place and I could not tell youwithout perjuring myself. " Asked, to whom she promised? answered, thatshe had promised to Saints Catherine and Margaret, and this was shown tothe King. She also said she had promised it to these two saints, becausethey had required it of her. And the same Jeanne had done this at theirrequest. "Too many people would have asked me concerning it, if I hadnot promised to the aforesaid saints. " She was then asked, whenshe showed this sign to the King if there were others with him; sheanswered, that to her there was no one near him, even though many peoplemight have been present. (As a matter of fact the sign was given toCharles when he talked with the Maid apart in a recess, the great hallbeing full of the Court and followers; so that this was strictly true. )Asked further, if she saw a crown over the head of her King whenshe showed him this sign, but replied: "I cannot answer you withoutperjury. " Asked further if her King had a crown when he was at Rheims, answered, that in her opinion her King had a crown which he found atRheims, but a very fine one was afterwards brought for him. He did thisto hasten matters, at the desire of the city of Rheims; but if he hadbeen more certain, he could have had a crown a thousand times richer. (All this is very obscure. )

Asked, if she had seen this crown, she answered: "I could not tell youwithout perjury, but I heard that it was a very rich one. " It was thendetermined to conclude for this day. 

On the sixth day there was again the same questions about the oath, ending in the usual way. And the cross-examination was at oncecontinued. 

She was asked if she would say whether St. Michael had wings, and whatbodies and members had St. Catherine and St. Margaret; and she answered, "I have told you what I know, and will make no other reply"; she said, moreover, that when she saw St. Michael and St. Catherine and St. Margaret, she knew at once that they were saints of Paradise. Asked, ifshe saw anything more than their faces, she answered: "I have told youall I know of them: and I would rather have had my head taken off thantell you all I know. " She then said that in whatever concerned the trialshe would speak freely. Asked, if she believed that St. Michael and St. Gabriel had natural heads, she answered: "I saw them with my eyes andI believe that they are, as firmly as I believe that God is. " Asked, ifshe believed that God made them in the form in which she saw them, sheanswered, "Yes. " Asked, if she believed that God had created them in thesame form from the beginning, answered: "You shall have no more for thepresent, except what I have already said. "

This subject was then dropped, and the examiner made another leapforward to a different part of her life. "Did you know by revelationthat you should break prison?" he said. To this Jeanne answeredindignantly: "This has nothing to do with your trial. Would you have mespeak against myself?"

Again questioned what her "voices" had said to her in respect to herattempts at escape, she again answered: "This has nothing to do with thetrial; I go back to the trial. If all your questions were about that, I should tell you all. " She said besides, on her faith, that she knewneither the day nor the hour when she should escape. She was then askedwhat the voices said to her generally, and answered: "In truth, theytell me I shall be freed, but neither the day nor the hour; and that Iought to speak boldly, and with a glad countenance. " She was then askedwhether, when first she saw her King, he asked her whether it was byrevelation that she had assumed the dress of a man? she replied: "I haveanswered this. I cannot recollect whether he asked me. But it is writtenin the book at Poitiers. " Asked, whether the doctors who examined herthere, some for a month, some for three weeks, had asked her about herchange of dress; she answered: "I don't remember; but I know they askedme when I assumed the dress of a man, and I told them it was in the townof Vaucouleurs. " Asked, whether these doctors had inquired whether itwas her voices which had made her take that dress, answered, "I don'tremember. " Asked if her Queen wished her to change her dress when shefirst saw her, answered, "I don't remember. " Asked if her King, Queen, and all of her party did not ask her to lay aside the dress of a man, she answered, "This has nothing to do with the trial. " Asked, if thesame was not requested of her in the castle of Beaurevoir, she answered:"It is true. And I replied that I could not lay it aside without thepermission of God. " She said further that the demoiselle of Luxembourg(aunt of Jeanne's captor, and a very old woman) and the lady ofBeaurevoir offered her a woman's dress, or stuff to make one, and beggedher to wear it; but she replied that she had not yet the permission ofour Lord, and that it was not yet time. Asked, if M. Jean de Pressy andothers at Arras had offered her a woman's dress, she answered, "He andothers have often asked it of me. " Asked, if she thought she would havedone wrong in putting on a woman's dress, she answered, that it wasbetter to obey her sovereign Lord, that is, God; she said also that ifshe had done it, she would rather have done it at the request of thesetwo ladies than of any other in France, except her Queen. Asked, if, when God revealed to her that she should change her dress, it was by thevoice of St. Michael, St. Catherine, or St. Margaret, she answered, "Youshall hear no more about it. " Asked, when the King first employed her, and her standard was made, whether the men-at-arms and others who tookpart in the war did not have flags imitated from hers? she answered, "Itis well to know that the lords retained their own arms"; she also addedthat her brothers-in-arms made such pennons as pleased them. Asked, howthese were made, if they were of linen or cloth, answered, that theywere of white satin, some of them with lilies; that she had but two orthree lances in her own company--but that in the rest of the army somecarried pennons like hers, but only to distinguish them from others. Asked, if the banners were often renewed, answered: "I know not; whenthe staff was broken it was renewed. " Asked, if she had not said thatthe pennons copied from hers were fortunate, answered, that she hadsaid, "Go in boldly among the English"; and that she had done the sameherself. Asked, if she said that they should have good luck if they borethe banners well, answered, that she had told them what would happen, and what should still happen. Asked, if she had caused holy water tobe sprinkled on the pennons when they were new, she answered, "That hasnothing to do with the trial"; but added that if she did so sprinklethem she was not instructed to answer that question now. Asked, ifthe others put _Jhesus Maria_ upon their pennons, she answered: "Bymy faith, I know nothing about it. " Asked, if she had ever carried orcaused to be carried in a procession round a church or altar the linenof which the pennons were made, answered no, that she had never seenanything of the kind done. 

Asked, when she was before Jargeau, what it was that she wore behindher helmet, and if she had not something round it, she answered: "By myfaith, there was nothing. " Asked, if she knew a certain Brother Richard, she answered: "I never saw him till I was before Troyes. " Asked, whatcheer Brother Richard made to her, answered, that she thought the peopleof Troyes had sent him to her, doubting whether she had come on the partof God, and that as he approached her he made the sign of the cross, andsprinkled holy water; she said to him: "Come on boldly; I shall not flyaway. " Asked, if she had seen, or had caused to be made, any images orpictures of herself, she answered, that at Arras she had seen a picturein the hands of a Scot, where she was represented fully armed, kneelingon one knee, and presenting a letter to the King; but that she had nevercaused any image or picture of herself to be made. Asked concerning atable in the house of her host, upon which were painted three women, with _Justice, Peace, Union_ inscribed beneath, answered, that she knewnothing of it. Asked, if she knew that those of her party caused massesand prayers to be made in her honour, she answered, that she knew not;and if they did so, it was not by any command of hers; but that if theydid so, her opinion was that they did no wrong. Asked, if those of herparty firmly believed that she was sent from God, she answered: "I knownot whether they believed it; but even if they did not believe it, I amnone the less sent on the part of God. " Asked, whether she thought thatto believe that she was sent from god was a worthy faith, she answered, that if they believed that she was sent from God they were not mistaken. Asked, if she knew what her party meant by kissing her feet and handsand her garments, answered, that many people did it, but that her handswere kissed as little as she could help it. The poor people, however, came to her of their own free will, because she never oppressed them, but protected them as far as was in her power. Asked, what reverencethe people of Troyes made to her, she answered, "None at all, " and addedthat she believed Brother Richard came into Troyes with her army, butthat she had not seen him coming in. Asked, if he had not preached atthe gates when she came, answered, that she scarcely paused there atall, and knew nothing of any sermon. Asked, how long she was at Rheims, and answered, four or five days. Asked, whether she baptised (stoodgodmother to) children there, she answered: To one at Troyes, but didnot remember any at Rheims or at Château-Thierry; but there were two atSt. Denis; and willingly she called the boys "Charles, " in honour of herKing, and the girls "Jeanne, " according to what their mothers wished. Asked, if the good women of the town did not touch with their rings therings she wore, she answered, that many women touched her hands and herrings; but she did not know why they did it. Asked, what she did withthe gloves in which her King was consecrated, she answered that "Gloveswere distributed to the knights and nobles that came there"; and therewas one who lost his; but she did not say that she would find it forhim. Also she said that her standard was in the church at Rheims, andshe believed near the altar, and she herself had carried it for a shorttime, but did not know whether Brother Richard had held it. 

She was then asked if she communicated and went to confession oftenwhile moving about the country, and if she received the sacrament in hermale costume; to which she answered "yes, but without her arms"; she wasthen questioned about a horse belonging to the Bishop of Senlis, which had not suited her, a matter completely without importance. Theinference intended was that it was taken from him without being paidfor; but there was no evidence that the Maid knew anything about it. Wethen come to the incident of Lagny. 

She was asked how old the child was which she saw at Lagny, andanswered, three days; it had been brought to Lagny to the Church ofNôtre Dame, and she was told that all the maids in Lagny were before ourLady praying for it, and she also wished to go and pray God and our Ladythat its life might come back; and she went, and prayed with the rest. And finally life appeared; it yawned three times, and was baptised andburied in consecrated ground. It had given no sign of life for threedays and was black as her coat, but when it yawned its colour began tocome back. She was there with the other maids on her knees before ourLady to make her prayer. 

The reader must understand that this was no special appeal to Jeanne'smiraculous power, but a custom of that intense and tender charitywith which the Church of Rome corrects her dogmatism upon questions ofsalvation. A child unbaptised could not be buried in consecrated ground, and was subject to all the sorrows of the unredeemed; but who coulddoubt that the priest would be easily persuaded by some wavering of thetapers on the altar upon the little dead face, some flicker of his owncompassionate eyelids, that sufficient life had come back to permit theholy rite to be administered? The whole little scene is affecting in theextreme, the young creatures all kneeling, fervently appealing tothe Maiden-mother, the priest ready to take instant advantage of anypossible flicker, the Maid of France, no conspicuous figure, but weepingand praying among the rest. There was no thought here of the raisingof the dead--the prayer was for breath enough only to allow of the holyobservance, the blessed water, the last possibility of human love andeffort. 

Jeanne was then questioned concerning Catherine of La Rochelle, thesupposed prophetess, who had been played against her by La Tremouilleand his follows, and narrated how she had watched two nights to seethe mysterious lady clothed in cloth of gold who was said to appear toCatherine, but had not seen her, and that she had advised the womanto return to her husband and children. Catherine's mission was to gothrough the "good towns" with heralds and trumpets to call upon thosewho had money or treasure of any kind to give it to the King, and sheprofessed to have a supernatural knowledge where such money was hidden. (No doubt La Tremouille must have thought that to get money, which wasso scarce, in such a simple way, was worth trying at least. But Jeanne'sopinion was that it was folly, and that there was nothing in it; anopinion fully verified. Catherine's advice had been that Jeanne shouldgo to the Duke of Burgundy to make peace; but Jeanne had answered thatno peace could be made save at the end of the lance. )

She was then asked about the siege of La Charité; she answered, that shehad made an assault: but had not sprinkled holy water, or caused itto be sprinkled. Asked, why she did not enter the city as she had thecommand of God to do so, she replied: "Who told you that I was commandedto enter?" Asked, if she had not had the advice of her voices, sheanswered, that she had desired to go into France (meaning towardsParis), but the generals had told her that it was better to go firstto La Charité. She was then asked if she had been long in the tower ofBeaurevoir; answered, that she was there about four months, and thatwhen she heard the English come she was angry and much troubled. Hervoices forbade her several times to attempt to escape; but at last, in the doubt she had of the English she threw herself down, commendingherself to God and to our Lady, and was much hurt. But after she haddone this the voice of St. Catherine said to her not to be afraid, thatshe should be healed, and that Compiègne would be relieved. 

Also she said that she prayed always for the relief of Compiègne withher council. Asked, what she said after she had thrown herself down, she answered, that some said that she was dead; and as soon as theBurgundians saw that she was not dead, they told her that she had thrownherself down. Asked, if she had said that she would rather die than fallinto the hands of the English, she answered, that she would much ratherhave rendered her soul to God than have fallen into the hands of theEnglish. Asked, if she was not in a great rage, and if she did notblaspheme the name of God, she answered, that she never said evil ofany saint, and that it was not her custom to swear. Asked respectingSoissons, when the captain had surrendered the town, whether she hadnot cursed God, and said that if she had gotten hold of the captain, shewould have cut him into four pieces; she answered, that she never sworeby any saint, and that those who said so had not understood her. 

*****

At this point the public trial of Jeanne came to a sudden end. Eitherthe feeling produced in the town, and even among the judges, by herundeviating, simple, and dignified testimony had begun to be more thanher persecutors had calculated upon; or else they hoped to make shorterwork with her when deprived of the free air of publicity, the sight nodoubt of some sympathetic faces, and the consciousness of being stillable to vindicate her cause and to maintain her faith before men. Twoor three fierce Inquisitors within her cell, and the Bishop, that manwithout heart or pity at their head, might still tear admissionsfrom her weariness, which a certain sympathetic atmosphere in a largeauditory, swept by waves of natural feeling, would strengthen her tokeep back. The Bishop made a proclamation that in order not to vex andtire his learned associates he would have the minutes of the previoussittings reduced into form, and submitted to them for judgment, whilehe himself carried on apart what further interrogatory was necessary. We are told that he was warned by a counsellor of the town that secretexaminations without witnesses or advocate on the prisoner's side, wereillegal; but Monseigneur de Beauvais was well aware that anything wouldbe legal which effected his purpose, and that once Jeanne was disposedof, the legality or illegality of the proceedings would be of smallimportance. I have thought it right to give to the best of my power aliteral translation of these examinations, notwithstanding their greatlength; as, except in one book, now out of print and very difficult toprocure, no such detailed translation, (8) so far as I am aware, exists;and it seems to me that, even at the risk of fatiguing the reader(always capable of skipping at his pleasure), it is better to unfold thecomplete scene with all its tedium and badgering, which brings out byevery touch the extraordinary self-command, valour, and sense ofthis wonderful Maid, the youngest, perhaps, and most ignorant of theassembly, yet meeting all with a modest and unabashed countenance, true, pure, and natural, --a far greater miracle in her simplicity and noblesteadfastness than even in the wonders she had done. 

 (1) She was in reality detained two days, which fact, no doubt, she judged to be an unimportant detail. 

 (2) Probably meaning, had been present when the voices came to her and had perceived her state of listening and abstraction. 

 (3) This was her special friend, Gerard of Epinal--her _compère_ and gossip; was it jesting beguiled by some childish recollection, or mock threat of youthful days that she said this?

 (4) An answer evidently given in the vagueness of imperfect knowledge, meaning a very great number. 

 (5) Quicherat gives a note on this subject to point out that there was really was but one Pope at this moment, the question having been settled by the abdication of Clement VIII. , Benedict XIV. Being a mere impostor. We cannot believe, however, that this historical cutting of the knot could be known to Jeanne. She probably felt only, with her fine instinct, that there could be but one Pope, and that to be deceived on such a matter ought to have been a thing impossible to all those priests and learned men; as a matter of fact the three claimants, on account of whom the Comte d'Armagnac had appealed to her, were no longer existing at the time he wrote. 

 (6) She meant Paris, which was lost by the English, according to her prophecy within the time named. 

 (7) It should here be noted that Jeanne's sign to the King being, as he afterwards declared, the answer to his most private devotions and the final setting at rest of a doubt which might have injured him much had it been known that he entertained it--it would have been dishonourable on her part and a great wrong to him had she revealed it. 

 (8) The translation of M. Fabre is now, I believe, reprinted, but it is not satisfactory. 

CHAPTER XIV --THE EXAMINATION IN PRISON. LENT, 1431. 

It must not be forgotten, in the history of this strange trial, that theprisoner was brought from the other side of France expressly that shemight be among a people who were not of her own party, and who had nonatural sympathies with her, but a hereditary connection with England, which engaged all its partialities on that side. For this purpose it wasthat the _venue_, the town expected the coming of the Witch, and all thedark revelations that might be extracted from her, her spells, and thedetails of that contract with the devil which was so entrancing tothe popular imagination, with excitement and eagerness. Such a _CauseCélèbre_ had never taken place among them before; and everybody no doubtlooked forward to the pleasure of seeing it proved that it was not bythe will of Heaven, but by some monstrous combination of black arts, that such an extraordinary result as the defeat of the invincibleEnglish soldiers had been brought about. The litigious and logicalNormans no doubt looked forward to it as to the most interestingentertainment, ending in the complete vindication of their own side andthe exposure of the nefarious arms used by their adversaries. 

But when the proceedings had been opened, and in place of somedark-browed and termagant sorceress, with the mark of every evil passionin her face, there appeared before the spectators crowding into everyavailable corner, the slim, youthful figure--was it boy or girl?--theserene and luminous countenance of the Maid, the flower of youth raisingits whiteness and innocence in the midst of all those black-robed, subtle Doctors, it is impossible but that the very first glance musthave given a shock and thrill of amazement and doubt to what may becalled the lay spectators, those who had no especial bias more thancommon report, and whose credit or interest were not involved inbringing this unlikely criminal to condemnation. "A girl! Like our ownJeanne at home, " might many a father have said, dismayed and confounded. She had, they all say, those eyes of innocence which it is so impossiblenot to believe, and that virginal voice, _assez femme_, which asentimental Frenchman insists upon as belonging only to the spotless. At all events she had the bearing of honesty, purity, and truth. She wasnot afraid though all the powers of hell--or was it only of theChurch and the Law?--were arrayed against her: no guilty mystery to bediscovered, was in her countenance. But it must have been plain to thekeen and not too charitable Normans that such semblances are not alwaysto be trusted, and that the devil himself even, on occasion, can takeupon himself the appearance of an angel of light; so that after thefirst shock of wonder they no doubt settled themselves to listen, believing that soon they would have their imaginations fed with talesof horror, and would discover the hoofs and the horns and unveilwith triumph the lurking demon. The French historians never take intoconsideration the fact that it was the belief of Rouen and Normandy, aswell as of any similar town or province in England, that the childHenry VI. Was lawful king, and that whatever was on the other side wasa hateful adversary, to be brought to such disaster and shame as waspossible, without mercy and without delay. 

But after a few days of the examination which we have just reported, public opinion was greatly staggered, and knew not how to turn. Gradually the conviction must have been forced upon every mind which hadany candour left, that Jeanne, at that dreadful bar, with the stakein sight, and all the learning of Paris--the entire power of one greatnational and half of another, all England and half France against--(manymore than half France, for the other part had abandoned hercause), --showed nothing of the demon, but all--if not of the angel, yetof the Maid, the emblem of perfection to that rude world, thoughoften so barbarously handled. It might almost be said of the age, notwithstanding its immorality and rampant viciousness, that in its eyesa true virgin could do no harm. And hers was one if ever such a thingexisted on earth. The talk in the streets began to take a very differenttone. Massieu the clerical sheriff's officer saw nothing in her answersthat was not good and right. Out of the midst of the crowd of listenerswould burst an occasional cry of "Well said!" An Englishman, even aknight, overcome by his feelings, cried out: "Why was not she English, this brave girl!" All these were ominous sounds. Still more ominous wasthe utterance of Maître Jean Lohier, a lawyer of Rouen, who declaredloudly that the trial was not a legal trial for the reasons whichfollow:

"In the first place because it was not in the form of an ordinary trial;secondly, because it was not held in a public court, and those presenthad not full and complete freedom to say what was their full andunbiassed opinion; thirdly, because there was question of the honour ofthe King of France of whose party Jeanne was, without calling him, or any one for him; fourthly, because neither libel nor articles wereproduced, and this woman who was only an uninstructed girl, had noadvocate to answer for her before so many Masters and Doctors, on suchgrave matters, and especially those which touched upon the revelationsof which she spoke; therefore it seemed to him that the trial was worthnothing. For these things Monseigneur de Beauvais was very indignantagainst the said Maître Lohier, saying: 'Here is Lohier who is going tomake a fine fuss about our trial; he calumniates us all, and tells theworld it is of no good. If one were to go by him, one would have tobegin everything over again, and all that has been done would be of nouse. ' Monseigneur de Beauvais said besides: 'It is easy to see on whichfoot he halts (_de quel pied il cloche_). By St. John, we shall donothing of the kind; we shall go on with our trial as we have begunit. '"

A day or two later Manchon, the Clerk of the Court (he who refused totake down Jeanne's conversation with her Judas), met this same lawyerLohier at church, and asked him, as no doubt every man asked everyother whom he met, how did he think the trial was going? to which Lohieranswered: "You see the manner in which they proceed; they will take her, if they can, in her words--that is to say, the assertions in which shesays _I know for certain_, things that concern her apparitions. If shewould say, 'It seems to me' instead of 'I know for certain, ' I do notsee how any man could condemn her. It appears that they proceed againsther rather from hate than from any other cause, and for this reason Ishall not remain here. I will have nothing to do with it. " This I thinkshows very clearly that Lohier, like the bulk of the population, by nomeans thought at first that it was "from hate" that the trial proceeded, but honestly believed that he had been called to try Jeanne as aprofessor of the black arts; and that he had discovered from her owntestimony that she was not so, and that the motive of the trial wasentirely a different one from that of justice; one in fact with which anhonest man could have nothing to do. 

It is very significant also that the number of judges present incourt on the sixth day, the last of the public examination, was onlythirty-eight, as against the sixty-two of the second day, which seems toprove that a general disgust and alarm was growing in the minds of thosemost closely concerned. Warwick and the soldiers, impatient of allsuch business, striding in noisily from time to time to give a carelessglance at the proceedings, might not stay long enough to share theimpression--or might, who can say? Their business was to get thispestilent woman, even if by chance she might be an innocent fanatic, cleared off the face of the earth and out of their way. 

After the sixth day, however, it would seem that the Bishop and histools had taken fright at the progress of public opinion. Beforedismissing the court on that occasion, Cauchon made an address to thedisturbed and anxious judges, informing them that he would not tire themout with prolonged sittings, but that a few specially chosen assistantswould now examine into what further details were necessary. In themeantime all would be put in writing; so that they might think it overand deliberate within themselves, so as to be able each to make areport either to himself, the Bishop, or to some one deputed by him. The assessors, thus thrown out of work, were however forbidden to leaveRouen without the Bishop's permission--probably because of the threatof Lohier. Repeated meetings were held in Cauchon's house to arrangethe details of the proceedings to follow; and during this time it wasperhaps hoped that any excitement outside would quiet down. The Bishophimself had in the meantime other work in hand. He had to receivecertain important visitors, one of them the man who held the appointmentof Chancellor of France on the English side, and who was well acquaintedwith the mind of his masters. We have no information whatever whetherCauchon ever himself wavered, or allowed the possibility of acquittingJeanne to enter his mind; but he must have seen that it was of the lastnecessity to know what would satisfy the English chiefs. No doubt he wasconfirmed and strengthened in the conviction that by hook or by crookher condemnation must be accomplished, by the conversation of theseillustrious visitors. To save Jeanne was impossible he must have beentold. No English soldier would strike a blow while she lived. Englanditself, the whole country, trembled at her name. Till she was got rid ofnothing could be done. 

There was of course great exaggeration in all this, for the English hadfought desperately enough in her presence except on the one occasionof Patay, notwithstanding all the early prestige of Jeanne. But at allevents it was made perfectly clear that the foregoing conclusion mustbe carried out, and that Jeanne must die: and, not only so, but she mustdie with opprobrium and disgrace as a witch, which almost everybody outof Rouen now believed her to be. The public examination which lasted sixdays was concluded on the third of March, 1430. On the following days, the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth of March, meetingswere held, as we have said, in the Bishop's house to consider whatit would be well to do next, at one of which a select company ofInquisitors was chosen to carry on the examination in private. Thesewere Jean de la Fontaine, a lawyer learned in canon law; Jean Beaupère, already her interrogator; Nicolas Midi, a Doctor in Theology; PierreMorice, Canon of Rouen and Ambassador from the English King to theCouncil of Bâle; Thomas de Courcelles, the learned and excellent youngDoctor already described; Nicolas l'Oyseleur, the traitor, also alreadysufficiently referred to; and Manchon, the honest Clerk of the court:the names of Gerard Feuillet, also a distinguished man, and JeanFecardo, an advocate, are likewise also mentioned. They seem to haveserved in their turn, three or four at a time. This private sessionbegan on the 10th of March, a week after the conclusion of the publictrial, and was held in the prison chamber inhabited by the Maid. 

We shall not attempt to follow literally those private examinations, which would take a great deal more space than we have at our command, and would be fatiguing to the reader from the constant and prolongedrepetitions; we shall therefore quote only such parts as are new or sogreatly enlarged from Jeanne's original statements as to seem so. At thefirst day's examination in her prison she was questioned about Compiègneand her various proceedings before reaching that place. (1) She wasasked, for one thing, if her voices had bidden her make the sally inwhich she was taken; to which she answered that had she known the timeshe was to be taken she would not have gone out, unless upon the expresscommand of the saints. She was then asked about her standard, herarms, and her horses, and replied that she had no coat-of-arms, but herbrothers had, who also had all her money, from ten to twelve thousandfrancs, which was "no great treasure to make war upon, " besides fivechargers, and about seven other horses, all from the King. The examinersthen came to their principal object, and having lulled her mind withthese trifles, turned suddenly to a subject on which they still hopedshe might commit herself, the sign which had proved her good faith tothe King. It is scarcely possible to avoid the feeling, grave as allthe circumstances were, that a little _malice_, a glance of mischievouspleasure, kindled in Jeanne's eye. She had refused to enter into furtherexplanations again and again. She had warned them that she would givethem no true light on the subjects that concerned the King. Now shewould seem to have had sudden recourse to the mystification that is dearto youth, to have tossed her young head and said: "_Have then your ownway_"; and forthwith proceeded to romance, according to the indicationsgiven her of what was wanted, without thought of preserving anyappearance of reality. Most probably indeed, her air and tone would makeit apparent to her persistent questioners how complete a fable, or atleast parable, it was. 

Asked, what sign she gave to the King, she replied that it was abeautiful and honourable sign, very creditable and very good, and richabove all. Asked, if it still lasted; answered, "It would be good toknow; it will last a thousand years and more if well guarded, " addingthat it was in the treasure of the King. Asked, if it was of gold orsilver or of precious stones, or in the form of a crown; answered: "Iwill tell you nothing more; but no man could devise a thing so rich asthis sign; but the sign that is necessary for you is that God shoulddeliver me out of your hands, and that is what He will do. " She alsosaid that when she had to go to the King it was said by her voices: "Goboldly; and when you are before the King he will have a sign which willmake him receive and believe in you. " Asked, what reverence she madewhen the sign came to the King, and if it came from God; answered, thatshe had thanked God for having delivered her from the priests of her ownparty who had argued against her, and that she had knelt down severaltimes; she also said that an angel from God, and not from another, brought the sign to the King; and she had thanked the Lord many times;she added that the priests ceased to argue against when they had seenthat sign. Asked, if the clergy of her party (_de par delà_) saw theabove sign; answered yes, that her King if he were satisfied; and heanswered yes. And afterwards she went to a little chapel close by, andheard them say that after she was gone more than three hundred peoplesaw the said sign. She said besides that for love of her, and that theyshould give up questioning her, God permitted those of her party to seethe sign. Asked, if the King and she made reverence to the angel whenhe brought the sign; answered yes, for herself, that she knelt down andtook off her hood. 

What Jeanne meant by this strange romance can only, I think be explainedby this hypothesis. She was "dazed and bewildered, " say some of thehistorians, evidently not knowing how to interpret so strangean interruption to her narrative; but there is no other sign ofbewilderment; her mind was always clear and her intelligence complete. Granting that the whole story was boldly ironical, its object is veryapparent. Honour forbade her to betray the King's secret, and she hadexpressly said she would not do so. But her story seems to say--_sinceyou will insist that there was a sign, though I have told you I couldgive you no information, have it your own way; you shall have a sign andone of the very best; it delivered me from the priests of my own party(de par delà)_. Jeanne was no milk-sop; she was bold enough to send awinged shaft to the confusion of the priests of the other side who hadtormented her in the same way. One can imagine a lurking smile at thecorner of her mouth. Let them take it since they would have it. And wemay well believe there was that in her eye, and in the details heaped upso lightly to form the miraculous tale, which left little doubt in theminds of the questioners, of the spirit in which she spoke: though to uswho only read the record the effect is of a more bewildering kind. 

Two days after, on Monday, the 12th of March, the Inquisitors began byseveral additional questions concerning the angel who brought thesign to the King; was it the same whom she first saw, or another? Sheanswered that it was the same, and no other was wanted. Asked, if thisangel had not deceived her since she had been taken prisoner; answered, that SHE BELIEVED SINCE IT SO PLEASED OUR LORD THAT IT WAS BEST THAT SHESHOULD BE TAKEN. Asked, if the angel had not failed her; answered, "Howcould he have failed me, when he comforts me every day?" This comfortis what she understands to come through St. Catherine and St. Margaret. Asked, whether she called them, or they came without being called, sheanswered, that they often came without being called, and if they didnot come soon enough, she asked our Saviour to send them. Asked, if St. Denis had ever appeared to her; answered, not that she knew. Asked, if when she promised to our Lord to remain a virgin she spoke to Him;answered, that it ought to be enough to speak to those who were sent byHim that is to say, St. Catherine and St. Margaret. Asked, what inducedher to summon a man to Toul, in respect to marriage; answered, "I didnot summon him; it was he who summoned me"; and that on that occasionshe had sworn before the judge to speak the truth, which was that shehad not made him any promise. She also said that the first time she hadheard the voices she made a vow of virginity so long as it pleased God, being then about the age of thirteen. 

It was the object of the judges by these questions to prove that, according to a fable which had obtained some credit, Jeanne during hervisit to La Rousse, the village inn-keeper at Neufchâteau, had acted asservant in the house and tarnished her good fame--so that her betrothedhad refused to marry her: and that he had been brought before theBishop's court at Toul for his breach of promise, as we should say. Exactly the reverse was the case, as the reader will remember. 

Jeanne was further asked, if she had spoken of her visions to hercuré or to any ecclesiastic: and answered no, but only to Robert deBaudricourt and to her King; but added that she was not bidden by hervoices to conceal them, but feared to reveal them lest the Burgundiansshould hear of them and prevent her going. And especially she had muchdoubt of her father, lest he should hinder her from going. Asked, if shethought she did well to go away without the permission of her fatherand mother, when it is certain we ought to honour our father and mother;answered, that in every other thing she had fully obeyed him, exceptin respect to her departure; but she had written to them, and they hadpardoned her. Asked, if when she left her father and mother she did notthink it was a sin; answered, that her voices were quite willing thatshe should tell them, if it were not for the pain it would havegiven them; but as for herself, she would not have told them for anyconsideration; also that her voices left her to do as she pleased, totell or not. 

*****

Having gone so far the reverend fathers went to dinner, and Jeanne wehope had her piece of bread and her _eau rougie_. In the afternoon theseindefatigable questioners returned, and the first few questions throwa fuller light on the troubled cottage at Domremy, out of which thiswonderful maiden came like a being of another kind. 

She was questioned as to the dreams of her father; and answered, thatwhile she was still at home her mother told her several times that herfather said he had dreamt that Jeanne his daughter had gone away withthe troopers, that her father and mother took great care of her and heldher in great subjection: and she obeyed them in every point except thatof her affair at Toul in respect to marriage. She also said that hermother had told her what her father had said to her brothers: "If Icould think that the thing would happen of which I have dreamed, I wishshe might be drowned first; and if you would not do it, I would drownher with my own hands"; and that he nearly lost his senses when she wentto Vaucouleurs. 

How profound is this little village tragedy! The suspicious, stern, andunhopeful peasant, never sure even that the most transparent and puremay not be capable of infamy, distracted with that horror of personaldegradation which is involved in family disgrace, cruel in the intensityof his pride and fear of shame! He has been revealed to us in manylands, always one of the most impressive of human pictures, withno trust of love in him but an overwhelming faith in every viciouspossibility. If there is no evidence to prove that, even at the momentwhen Jeanne was supreme, when he was induced to go to Rheims to see thecoronation, Jacques d'Arc was still dark, unresponsive, never more surethan any of the Inquisitors that his daughter was not a witch, or worse, a shameless creature linked to the captains and the splendid personagesabout her by very different ties from those which appeared--there is atleast not a word to prove that he had changed his mind. She does not addanything to soften the description here given. The sudden appearance ofthis dark remorseless figure, looking on from his village, who probablyin all Domremy--when Domremy got to hear the news--would be the onlyperson who would in his desperation almost applaud that stake anddevouring flame, is too startling for words. 

The end of this day's examination was remarkable also for a sudden lightupon the method she had intended to adopt in respect to the Dukeof Orleans, then in prison in England, whom it was one of her mostcherished hopes to deliver. 

Asked, how she meant to rescue the Duc d'Orléans: she answered, that bythat time she hoped to have taken English prisoners enough to exchangefor him: and if she had not taken enough she should have crossed thesea, in power, to search for him in England. Asked, if St. Catherineand St. Margaret had told her absolutely and without condition that sheshould take enough prisoners to exchange for the Duc d'Orléans, who wasin England, or otherwise, that she should cross the sea to fetch him andbring him back within three years; she answered yes: and that she hadtold the King and had begged him to permit her to make prisoners. Shesaid further that if she had lasted three years without hindrance, sheshould have delivered him. Otherwise she said she had not thought of solong a time as three years, although it should have been more than one;but she did not at present recollect exactly. 

There is a curious story existing, though we do not remember whenceit comes and there is not a scrap of evidence for it, which suggests arumour that Jeanne was not the child of the d'Arc family at all, butin fact an abandoned and illegitimate child of the Queen, Isabel ofBavaria, and that her real father was the murdered Duc d'Orléans. Thissuggestion might explain the ease with which she fell into the way ofCourts, a sort of air _à la Princesse_ which certainly was about her, and her especial devotion to Orleans, both to the city and the duke. Ashadow of a supposed child of our own Queen Mary has also appearedin history, quite without warrant or likelihood. It is a littleconventional and well worn even in the way of romance, yet there arecertain fanciful suggestions in the thought. 

After the above, Jeanne was again questioned and at great length uponthe sign given to the King, upon the angel who brought it, the manner ofhis coming and going, the persons who saw him, those who saw the crownbestowed upon the King, and so on, in the most minute detail. That thepurpose of the sign was that "they should give up arguing and so lether proceed on her mission, " she repeated again and again; but here is acurious additional note. 

She was asked how the King and the people with him were convinced thatit was an angel; and answered, that the King knew it by the instructionof the ecclesiastics who were there, and also by the sign of the crown. Asked, how the ecclesiastics (_gens d'église_) knew it was an angel sheanswered, "By their knowledge (science), and because they were priests. "

Was this the keenest irony, or was it the wandering of a weary mind?We cannot tell; but if the latter, it was the only occasion on whichJeanne's mind wandered; and there was method and meaning in the strangetale. 

She was further questioned whether it was by the advice of her voicesthat she attacked La Charité, and afterwards Paris, her two points offailure; the purpose of her examiners clearly being to convince her thatthose voices had deceived her. To both questions she answered no. To Paris she went at the request of gentlemen who wished to make askirmish, or assault of arms (_vaillance d'armes_); but she intended togo farther, and to pass the moats; that is, to force the fighting andmake the skirmish into a serious assault; the same was the case beforeLa Charité. She was asked whether she had no revelation concerning Pontl'Evêque, and said that since it was revealed to her at Melun that sheshould be taken, she had had more recourse to the will of the captainsthan to her own; but she did not tell them that it was revealed to herthat she should be taken. Asked, if she thought it was well doneto attack Paris on the day of the Nativity of our Lady, which was afestival of the Church; she answered, that it was always well to keepthe festivals of our Lady: and in her conscience it seemed to her thatit was and always would be a good thing to keep the feasts of our Lady, from one end to the other. 

In the afternoon the examiners returned to the attempt at escape orsuicide--they seemed to have preferred the latter explanation--made atBeaurevoir; and as Jeanne expresses herself with more freedom as to herpersonal motives in these prison examinations and opens her heart morefreely, there is much here which we give in full. 

She was asked first what was the cause of her leap from the tower ofBeaurevoir. She answered that she had heard that all the people ofCompiègne, down to the age of seven, were to be put to the sword, andthat she would rather die than live after such a destruction of goodpeople; this was one of the reasons; the other was that she knew thatshe was sold to the English and that she would rather die than fall intothe hands of the English, her enemies. Asked, if she made that leapby the command of her voices; answered, that St. Catherine said to heralmost every day that she was not to leap, for that God would help her, and also the people of Compiègne: and she, Jeanne, said to St. Catherinethat since God intended to help the people of Compiègne she would fainbe there. And St. Catherine said: "You must take it in good part, butyou will not be delivered till you have seen the King of the English. "And she, Jeanne, answered: "Truly I do not wish to see him. I wouldrather die than fall into the hands of the English. " Asked, if she hadsaid to St. Catherine and St. Margaret, "Will God leave the good peopleof Compiègne to die so cruelly?" answered, that she did not say "socruelly, " but said it in this way: "Will God leave these good peopleof Compiègne to die, who have been and are so loyal to their lord?" Sheadded that after she fell there were two or three days that she wouldnot eat; and that she was so hurt by the leap that she could not eat;but all the time she was comforted by St. Catherine, who told her toconfess and ask pardon of God for that act, and that without doubt thepeople of Compiègne would have succour before Martinmas. And then shetook pains to recover and began to eat, and shortly was healed. 

Asked, whether, when she threw herself down, she wished to kill herself, she answered no; but that in throwing herself down she commended herselfto God, and hoped by means of that leap to escape and to avoid beingdelivered to the English. Asked, if, when she recovered the power ofspeech, she had denied and blasphemed God and the saints, as had beenreported; answered, that she remembered nothing of the kind, and that, as far as she knew, she had never denied and blasphemed God and Hissaints there nor anywhere else, and did not confess that she had doneso, having no recollection of it. Asked, if she would like to see theinformation taken on the spot, answered: "I refer myself to God, and notanother, and to a good confession. " Asked, if her voices ever desireddelay for their replies; answered, that St. Catherine always answeredher at once, but sometimes she, Jeanne, could not hear because ofthe tumult round her (_turbacion des personnes_) and the noise of herguards; but that when she asked anything of St. Catherine, sometimesshe, and sometimes St. Margaret asked of our Lord, and then by thecommand of our Lord an answer was given to her. Asked, if, when theycame, there was always light accompanying them, and if she did notsee that light when she heard the voice in the castle without knowingwhether it was in her chamber or not: answered, that there was nevera day that they did not come into the castle, and that they never camewithout light: and that time she heard the voice, but did not rememberwhether she saw the light, or whether she saw St. Catherine. Also shesaid she had asked from her voices three things: one, her release: theother, that God would help the French, and keep the town faithful: andthe other the salvation of her soul. Afterwards she asked that she mighthave a copy of these questions and her answers if she were to be takento Paris, that she may give them to the people in Paris, and say tothem, "This is how I was questioned in Rouen, and here are my replies, "that she might not be exhausted by so many questions. 

Asked, what she meant when she said that Monseigneur de Beauvais puthimself in danger by bringing her to trial, and why Monseigneur deBeauvais more than others, she answered, that this was and is what shesaid to Monseigneur de Beauvais: "You say that you are my judge. I knownot whether you are so; but take care that you judge well, or you willput yourself in great danger. I warn you, so that if our Lord shouldchastise you for it, I may have done my duty in warning you. " Asked, what was that danger? she answered, that St. Catherine had said that sheshould have succour, but that she knew not whether this meant thatshe would be delivered from prison, or that, when she was before thetribunal, there might come trouble by which she should be delivered;she thought, however, it would be the one or the other. And all the morethat her voices told her that she would be delivered by a great victory;and afterwards they said to her: "Take everything cheerfully, do notbe disturbed by this martyrdom: thou shalt thence come at last to thekingdom of Heaven. " And this the voices said simply and absolutely--thatis to say, without fail; she explained that she called It martyrdombecause of all the pain and adversity that she had suffered in prison;and she knew not whether she might have still more to suffer, but waitedupon our Lord. She was then asked whether, since her voices had saidthat she should go to Paradise, she felt assured that she should besaved and not damned in hell; she answered, that she believed firmlywhat her voices said about her being saved, as firmly as if she wereso already. And when it was said to her that this answer was of greatweight, she answered that she herself held it as a great treasure. 

We have said that Jeanne's answers to the Inquisitors in prison had amore familiar form than in the public examination; which seem toprove that they were not unkind to her, further, at least, than by thepersistence and tediousness of their questions. The Bishop for one thingwas seldom present; the sittings were frequently presided over by theDeputy Inquisitor, who had made great efforts to be free of the businessaltogether, and had but very recently been forced into it; so that wemay at least imagine, as he was so reluctant, that he did what he couldto soften the proceedings. Jean de la Fontaine, too, was a milder manthan her former questioners, and in so small an assembly she could notbe disturbed and interrupted by Frère Isambard's well-meant signs andwhispers. She speaks at length and with a self-disclosure which seems tohave little that was painful in it, like one matured into a kind ofage by long weariness and trouble, who regards the panorama of her lifepassing before her with almost a pensive pleasure. And it is clear thatJeanne's ear, still so young and keen, notwithstanding that attitude ofmind, was still intent upon sounds from without, and that Jeanne'sheart still expected a sudden assault, a great victory for France, whichshould open her prison doors--or even a rising in the very judgment hallto deliver her. How could they keep still outside, Dunois, Alençon, La Hire, the mighty men of valour, while they knew that she was beingracked and tortured within? She who could not bear to be out of theconflict to serve her friends at Compiègne, even when succour from onhigh had been promised, how was it possible that these gallant knightscould live and let her die, their gentle comrade, their dauntlessleader? In those long hours, amid the noise of the guards within and thegarrison around, how she must have thought, over and over again, wherewere they? when were they coming? how often imagined that a louder clangof arms than usual, a rush of hasty feet, meant that they were here!

But honour and love kept Jeanne's lips closed. Not a word did she saythat could discredit King, or party, or friends; not a reproach to thosewho had abandoned her. She still looked for the great victory in whichMonseigneur, if he did not take care, might run the risk of beingroughly handled, or of a sudden tumult in his own very court that wouldpitch him form his guilty seat. It was but the fourteenth of Marchstill, and there were six weary weeks to come. She did not know the houror the day, but yet she believed that this great deliverance was on itsway. 

And there was a great deliverance to come: but not of this kind. Thevoices of God--how can we deny it?--are often, though in a loftiersense, like those fantastic voices that keep the word of promise to theear but break it to the heart. They promised her a great victory: andshe had it, and also the fullest deliverance: but only by the stake andthe fire, which were not less dreadful to Jeanne than to any other girlof her age. They did not speak to deceive her, but she was deceived;they kept their promise, but not as she understood it. "These all diedin faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afaroff, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them. " Jeanne too waspersuaded of them, but was not to receive them--except in the other way. 

On the afternoon of the same day (it was still Lent, and Jeanne fasted, whatever our priests may have done), she was again closely questionedon the subject, this time, of Franquet d'Arras, who, as has been abovenarrated, was taken by her in the course of some indiscriminate fightingin the north. She was asked if it was not mortal sin to take a man asprisoner of war and then give him up to be executed. There was evidentlyno perception of similarities in the minds of the judges, for this wasprecisely what had been done in the case of Jeanne herself; but even shedoes not seem to have been struck by the fact. Their object, apparently, was by proving that she was in a state of sin, to prove also that hervoices were of no authority, as being unable to discover so simple aprinciple as this. 

When they spoke to her of "one named Franquet d'Arras, who was executedat Lagny, " she answered that she consented to his death, as he deservedit, for he had confessed to being a murderer, a thief, and a traitor. She said that his trial lasted fifteen days, the Bailli de Senlis andthe law officers of Lagny being the judges; and she added that she hadwished to have Franquet, to exchange him for a man of Paris, Seigneur deLours (corrected, innkeeper at the sign of l'Ours); but when she heardthat this man was dead, and when the Bailli told her that she wouldgo very much against justice if she set Franquet free, she said to theBailli: "Since my man is dead whom I wished to deliver, do with this onewhatever justice demands. " Asked, if she took the money or allowed it tobe taken by him who had taken Franquet, she answered, that she was not amoney changer or a treasurer of France, to deal with money. 

She was then reminded that having assaulted Paris on a holy day, havingtaken the horse of Monseigneur de Senlis, having thrown herself downfrom the tower of Beaurevoir, having consented to the death of Franquetd'Arras, and being still dressed in the costume of a man, did she notthink that she must be in a state of mortal sin? She answered to thefirst question about Paris: "I do not think I was guilty of mortal sin, and if I have sinned it is to God that I would make it known, and inconfession to God by the priest. " To the second question, concerning thehorse of Senlis, she answered, that she believed firmly that there wasnot mortal sin in this, seeing it was valued, and the Bishop had duenotice of it, and at all events it was sent back to the Seigneur de laTrémouille to give it back to Monseigneur de Senlis. The said horse wasof no use to her; and, on the other hand, she did not wish to keep itbecause she heard that the Bishop was displeased that his horse shouldhave been taken. And as for the tower of Beaurevoir: "I did it not todestroy myself, but in the hope of saving myself and of going to the aidof the good people who were in need. " But after having done it, she hadconfessed her sin, and asked pardon of our Lord, and had pardon of Him. And she allowed that it was not right to have made that leap, but thatshe did wrong. 

The next day an important question was introduced, the only one asyet which Jeanne does not seem to have been able to answer withunderstanding. On points of fact or in respect to her visions she wasalways quite clear, but questions concerning the Church were beyondher knowledge. It is only indeed after some time has elapsed that weperceive why such a question was introduced. 

After admonitions made to her she was required, if she had done anythingcontrary to the faith, to submit herself to the decision of the Church. She replied, that her answers had all been heard and seen by clerks, and that they could say whether there was anything in them against thefaith: and that if they would point out to her where any error was, afterwards she would tell them what was said by her counsellors. Atall events if there was anything against the faith which our Lord hadcommanded, she would not sustain it, and would be very sorry to goagainst that. Here it was shown to her that there was a Church militantand a Church triumphant, and she was asked if she knew the differencebetween them. She was also required to put herself under thejurisdiction of the Church, in respect to what she had done, whether itwas good or evil, but replied, "I will answer no more on this point forthe present. "

Having thrown in this tentative question which she did not understand, they returned to the question of her dress, which holds such animportant place in the entire interrogatory. If she were allowed tohear mass as she wished, having been all this time deprived of religiousordinances, did not she think it would be more honest and befitting thatshe should go in the dress of a woman? To this she replied vaguely, thatshe would much rather go to mass in the dress of a woman than to retainher male costume and not to hear mass; and that if she were certifiedthat she should hear mass, she would be there in a woman's dress. "Icertify you that you shall hear mass, " the examiner replied, "but youmust be dressed as a woman. " "What would you say, " she answered as witha momentary doubt, "if I had sworn to my King never to change?" butshe added: "Anyhow I answer for it. Find me a dress, long, touching theground, without a train, and give it to me to go to mass; but I willreturn to my present dress when I come back. " She was then asked whyshe would not have all the parts of a female dress to go to mass in; shesaid, "I will take counsel upon that, and answer you, " and begged againfor the honour of God and our Lady that she might be allowed to hearmass in this good town. Afterwards she was again recommended to assumethe whole dress of a woman and gave a conditional assent: "Get mea dress like that of a young _bourgeoise_, that is to say, a long_houppelande_; I will wear that and a woman's hood to go to mass. " Afterhaving promised, however, she made an appeal to them to leave her free, and to think no more of her garb, but to allow her to hear mass withoutchanging it. This would seem to have been refused, and all at oncewithout warning the jurisdiction of the Church was suddenly introducedagain. 

She was asked, whether in all she did and said she would submit herselfto the Church, and replied: "All my deeds and works are in the hands ofGod, and I depend only on Him; and I certify that I desire to do nothingand say nothing against the Christian faith; and if I have done or saidanything in the body that was against the Christian faith which ourLord has established, I should not defend it but cast it forth fromme. " Asked again, if she would not submit to the laws of the Church shereplied: "I can answer no more to-day on this point; but on Saturdaysend the clerk to me, if you do not come, and I will answer by the graceof God, and it can be put in writing. "

A great many questions followed as to her visions, but chiefly what hadbeen asked before. One thing only we may note, since it was one of thespecial sayings all her own, which fell from the lips of Jeanne, duringthis private and almost sympathetic examination. After being questionedclosely as to how she knew her first visitor to be St. Michael, etc. , she was asked, how she would have known had he been "l'Anemy" himself(a Norman must surely have used this word), taking the form of an angel:and finally, what doctrine he taught her?

She answered; above all things he said that she was to be a good childand that God would help her: and among other things that she was to goto the succour of the King of France. But the greater part of what theangel taught her, she continued, was already in their book; and THEANGEL SHOWED HER THE GREAT PITY THERE WAS OF THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE. 

The pity of it! That which has always gone most to the tender heart: acountry torn in pieces, brother fighting against brother, the invaderseated at the native hearth, and blood and fire making the smiling landa desert: "_la pitie qui estoit au royaume de France_. "

Did the Inquisitor break down here? Could no one go on? or was it merehuman incompetence to feel the divine touch? Some one broke into afoolish question about the height of the angel, and the sitting washurriedly concluded. Monseigneur might well be on his mettle; thatvery pity, was it not stealing into the souls of his private committeedeputed for so different a use?

*****

Next day the questions about St. Michael's personal appearance wereresumed, as a little feint we can only suppose, for the great questionof the Church was again immediately introduced; but in the meantimeJeanne had described her visitor in terms which it is pleasant to dwellon. "He was in the form of a _très vrai prud' homme_. " The term isdifficult to translate, as is the Galantuomo of Italy. The "King-HonestMan, " we used to say in English in the days of his late Majesty VictorEmmanuel of Italy; but that is not all that is meant--_un vrai prud'homme_, a man good, honest, brave, the best man, is more like it. The girl's honest imagination thought of no paraphernalia of wings orshining plumes. It was not the theatrical angel, not even the angel ofart whom she saw--whom it would have been so easy to invent, nay to takequite truthfully from the first painted window, radiating colour andbrightness through the dim, low-roofed church. But even with suchmaterial handy, Jeanne was not led into the conventional. She knewnothing about wings or emblematic scales. He was in the form of a braveand gentle man. She knew not anything greater, nor would she be seducedinto fable however sacred. Then once more the true assault began. 

She was asked, if she would submit all her sayings and doings, good orevil, to the judgment of our Holy Mother, the Church. She replied, thatas for the Church, she loved it and would sustain it with all her mightfor our Christian faith; and that it was not she whom they ought todisturb and hinder from going to church or from hearing mass. As to thegood things she had done, and that had happened, she must refer all tothe King of Heaven, who had sent her to Charles, King of France; and itshould be seen that the French would soon gain a great advantage whichGod would send them, so great that all the kingdom of France wouldbe shaken. And this, she said, that when it came to pass, they mightremember that she had said it. She was again asked, if she would submitto the jurisdiction of the Church, and answered, "I refer everythingto our Lord who sent me, to our Lady, and to the blessed Saints ofParadise"; and added her opinion was that our Lord and the Church meantthe same thing, and that difficulties should not be made concerningthis, when there was no difficulty, and they were both one. She was thentold that there was the Church triumphant, in which are God, the saints, the angels, and all saved souls. The Church militant is our Holy Fatherthe Pope, vicar of God on earth, the cardinals, the prelates of theChurch, and the clergy and all good Christians and Catholics, whichChurch properly assembled cannot err, but is guided by the Holy Spirit. And this being the case she was asked if she would refer her cause tothe Church militant thus explained to her. She replied that she hadcome to the King of France on the part of God, on the part of the VirginMary, the blessed Saints of Paradise, and the Church victorious inHeaven, and at their commandment; and to that Church she submitted allher good deeds, and all that she had done and might do. And if theyasked her whether she would submit to the Church militant, answered, that she would now answer no more than this. 

Here again the argument strayed back to the futile subject of dress, always at hand to be taken up again, one would say, when the judges werenon-plussed. Her first reply on this subject is remarkable and showsthat dark and terrible forebodings were already beginning to mingle withher hopes. 

Asked, what she had to say about the woman's dress that had been offeredto her, to hear mass in: she answered, that she would not take it yet, not until the Lord pleased; but that if it were necessary to lead herout to be executed, and if she should then have to be undressed, sherequired of the Lords of the Church that they would give her the graceto have a long chemise, and a kerchief for her head; that she wouldprefer to die rather than to alter what our Lord had directed her to do, and that she firmly believed our Lord would not let her descend so low, but that she should soon be helped by God and by a miracle. She was thenasked, if what she did in respect to the man's costume was by command ofGod, why she asked for a woman's chemise in case of death? answered, _Itis enough that it should be long_. 

The effect of these words in which so much was implied, must have madea supreme sensation among the handful of men gathered round the helplessgirl in her prison, bringing the stake in all its horror before theeyes of the judges as before her own. No other thing could have beensuggested by that piteous prayer. The stake, the scaffold, the fire--andthe shrinking figure all maidenly, helpless, exposed to every evil gaze, must have showed themselves at least for a moment against that darkbackground of prison wall. It was enough that it should be long--to hideher as much as was possible from those dreadful staring eyes. 

The interrogatory goes on wildly after this about the age and the dressof the saints. But a tone of fate had come into it, and Jeanne herself, it was evident, was very serious; her mind turned to more weightythoughts. Presently they asked if the saints hated the English, to whichshe replied that they hated what God hated and loved what He loved. Shewas then asked if God hated the English. She replied that of the love orhate that God had for the English, or what God did for their souls, she knew nothing; but she knew well that they should be driven out ofFrance, except those who died there; and that God would send victoryto the French against the English. Asked, if God was for the English solong as they were prosperous in France: she answered, that she knew notwhether God hated the French, but believed He had allowed them to bebeaten because of their sins. 

Jeanne was then brought to a test which, had she been a great statesmanor a learned doctor, would have been as dangerous, as the questionconcerning John the Baptist was to the priests and scribes. "If we shallsay: From heaven, he will say, Why then believed ye him not? but if weshall say of men we fear the people. " And she was only a peasant girland the event of which they spoke had been before her little time. 

Asked, if she thought and believed firmly that her King did well to killMonseigneur de Bourgogne, she answered that IT WAS A GREAT MISFORTUNEFOR THE KINGDOM OF FRANCE: but that however it might be amongthemselves, God had sent her to the succour of the King. 

One or two other questions of some importance followed amid perpetualchanges of the subject: one of which called forth as follows her lastdeliverance on the subject of the Pope. 

Asked, if she had said to Monseigneur de Beauvais that she would answeras exactly to him and to his clerks as she would have done before ourHoly Father the Pope, although at several points in the trial she wouldhave had to refuse to answer, if she did not answer more plainly thanbefore Monseigneur de Beauvais--she said that she had answered asmuch as she knew, and that if anything came to her memory that she hadforgotten to say, she would say it willingly. Asked, if it seemed to herthat she would be bound to answer the plain truth to the Pope, the vicarof God, in all he asked her touching the faith and her conscience, shereplied that she desired to be taken before him, and then she wouldanswer all that she ought to answer. 

Here we seem to perceive dimly that there was beginning to be a secondparty among those examiners, one of which was covertly but earnestlyattempting to lead Jeanne into an appeal to the Pope, which would haveconveyed her out of the hands of the English at least, and gained time, probably deliverance for her, could Jeanne have been made to understandit. 

This, however, was by no means the wish of Cauchon, whose spy andwhisperer, L'Oyseleur, was working against it in the background. Jeanneevidently failed to take up what they meant. She did not understand thedistinction between the Church militant and the Church triumphant: thatGod alone was her judge, and that no tribunal could decide upon thequestions which were between her Lord and herself, was too firmly fixedin her mind: and again and again the men whose desire was to make heradopt this expedient, were driven back into the ever repeated questionsabout St. Catherine and St. Margaret. 

One other of her distinctive sayings fell from her in the littleinterval that remained, in a series of useless questions about herstandard. Was it true that this standard had been carried into theCathedral at Rheims when those of the other captains were left behind?"It had been through the labour and the pain, " she said, "there was goodreason that it should have the honour. "

This last movement of a proud spirit, absolutely disinterested andwithout thought of honour or advancement in the usual sense of the word, gives a sort of trumpet note at the end of these wonderful wranglingsin prison, in which, however, there is a softening of tone visiblethroughout, and evident effect of human nature bringing into immediatecontact divers human creatures day after day. Jeanne is often at herbest, and never so frequently as during these less formal sittingsutters those flying words, simple and noble and of absolute truth tonature, which are noted everywhere, even in the most rambling records. 

*****

The private examination, concluding with that last answer about thebanner, came to an end on the 17th March, the day before Passion Sunday. Several subsequent days were occupied with repeated consultations inthe Bishop's palace, and the reading over of the minutes of theexaminations, to the judges first and afterwards to Jeanne, whoacknowledged their correctness, with one or two small amendments. It isonly now that Cauchon reappears in his own person. On the morning of thefollowing Sunday, which was Palm Sunday, he and four other doctors withhim had a conversation with Jeanne in her prison, very early in themorning, touching her repeated application to be allowed to hearmass and to communicate. The Bishop offered her his ultimatum: if sheconsented to resume her woman's dress, she might hear mass, but nototherwise; to which Jeanne replied, sorrowfully, that she would havedone so before now if she could; but that it was not in her power todo so. Thus after the long and bitter Lent her hopes of sharing in thesacred feast were finally taken from her. It remains uncertain whethershe considered that her change of dress would be direct disobedienceto God, which her words seem often to imply; or whether it would meanrenunciation of her mission, which she still hoped against hope to beable to resume; or if the fear of personal insult weighed most withher. The latter reason had evidently something to do with it, but, asevidently, not all. 

The background to these curious sittings, afterwards revealed to us, casts a hazy side-light upon them. Probably the Bishop, never present, must have been made aware by his spies of an intention on the part ofthose most favourable to Jeanne to support an appeal to the Pope; andL'Oyseleur, the traitor, who was all this time admitted to her cell bypermission of Cauchon, and really as his tool and agent, was activelyemployed in prejudicing her mind against them, counselling her not totrust to those clerks, not to yield to the Church. How he managed toexplain his own appearance on the other side, his official connectionwith the trial, and constant presence as one of her judges, it is hardto imagine. Probably he gave her to believe that he had sought thatposition (having got himself liberated from the imprisonment which hehad represented himself as sharing) for her sake, to be able to helpher. 

On the other hand her friends, whose hearts were touched by her candourand her sufferings, were not inactive. Jean de la Fontaine and the twomonks--l'Advenu and Frère Isambard--also succeeded in gaining admissionto her, and pressed upon her the advantage of appealing to the Church, to the Council of Bâle about to assemble, or to the Pope himself, whichwould have again changed the _venue_, and transferred her into lessprejudiced hands. It is very likely that Jeanne in her ignorance andinnocence might have held by her reference to the supreme tribunalof God in any case; and it is highly unlikely that of the Englishauthorities, intent on removing the only thing in France of which theirforces were afraid, should have given her up into the hands of the Pope, or allowed her to be transferred to any place of defence beyond theirreach; but at least it is a relief to the mind to find that all thesemen were not base, as appears on the face of things, but that pity andjustice and human feeling sometimes existed under the priest's gown andthe monk's cowl, if also treachery and falsehood of the blackest kind. The Bishop, who remained withdrawn, we know not why, from all theseprivate sittings in the prison (probably busy with his ecclesiasticalduties as Holy Week was approaching), heard with fury of this visit andadvice, and threatened vengeance upon the meddlers, not without effect, for Jean de la Fontaine, we are told--who had been deep in his councils, and indeed his deputy, as chief examiner--disappeared from Rouenimmediately after, and was heard of no more. 

 (1) Compiègne was a strong point. Had she proclaimed a promise from St. Catherine, of victory? Chastelain says so, long after date and with errors in fact. Two Anglo- Compiègnais were at her trial. The Rehabilitation does not go into this question. --(From Mr. Lang. )

CHAPTER XV -- RE-EXAMINATION. MARCH-MAY, 1431. 

Upon all these contentions followed the calm of Palm Sunday, a greatand touching festival, the first break upon the gloom of Lent, and aforerunner of the blessedness of Easter. We have already told how--asemblance of charity with which the reader might easily be deceived--theBishop and four of his assessors had gone to the prison to offer to theMaid permission to receive the sacrament if she would do so in a woman'sdress: and how after pleading that she might be allowed that privilegeas she was, in her male costume, and with a pathetic statement that shewould have yielded if she could, but that it was impossible--shefinally refused; and was so left in her prison to pass that sacred dayunsuccoured and alone. The historian Michelet, in the wonderful sketchin which he rises superior to himself, and which amidst all afterwritings remains the most beautiful and touching memorial of Jeanned'Arc, has made this day a central point in his tale, using with theskill of genius the service of the Church appropriate to the day, inheart-rending contrast with those doors of the prison which did notopen, and the help of God which did not come to the young and solitarycaptive. _Le beau jour fleuri_ passed over her in darkness anddesertion: her agony and passion lay before her like those of theDivine Sufferer, to whom every day of the succeeding week is speciallyconsecrated. There is almost indeed a painful following of the Saviour'ssteps in these dark days, the circumstances lending themselves in awonderful way to the comparison which French writers love to make, butwhich many of us must always feel, however spotless the sufferer, tohave a certain irreverence in them. But if ever martyr were worthy ofbeing called a partaker of the sufferings of Christ it was surely thisgirl, free, if ever human creature was, from self-seeking, or thoughtof reward, or ambitious hope, in whose heart there had never been anymotive but the service of God and the deliverance of her country, whohad neither looked before nor after, nor put her own interests intoconsideration in any way. Silently the feast passed with no holyprivileges of religion, no blessed token of the spring, no remembranceof the waving palms and scattered blossoms over which her Lord rode intoJerusalem to die. She had not that sweet fallacious triumph; but thedarker ordeal remained for her to follow. 

On Tuesday the 27th of March, her troubles began again. Before PalmSunday, the report of the trial had been read to her. She had now tohear the formal reading of the articles founded upon it, to give a finalresponse if she had any to give, or explanation, or addition, if shethought proper. The sitting was held in the great hall of the Castleof Rouen before a band of more than forty, all assembled for this finaltest. The Bishop made a prefactory speech to the prisoner, pointing outto her how benign and merciful were the judges now assembled, that theyhad no wish to punish, but rather to instruct and lead her in the rightway; and requesting her at this late period in the proceedings to chooseone or more from among them to help her. To which Jeanne replied; "Inthe first place concerning my good and our faith, I thank you and allthe company. As for the counsellor you offer me I thank you also, but Ihave no need to depart from our Lord as my counsellor. "

The articles, in which the former questions put to her and answered byher, were now repeated in the form of accusations, were then read to herone by one; her sorcery, sacrilege, etc. , being taken as facts. To afew she repeated, with various forcible and fine turns of phrase, herprevious answers, with here and there a new explanation; but to thegreat majority she referred simply to her former replies, or deniedthe charge, as follows: "The second article concerning sortilège, superstitious acts and divination, she denied, and in respect toadoration (i. E. Allowing herself to be adored) said: If any kissed herhands or her garments, it was not by her will, and that she kept herselffrom it as much as she could; and the rest of the article she denies. "This is a specimen of the manner in which she responded, with aclear-headed and undisturbed intelligence, point after point--_ipsaJohanna negat_, is the usual refrain: or else she referred with dignityto previous replies as her sole answer. But sometimes the girl wasmoved to indignation, sometimes added a word in her own defence: "As forfairies she knew not what they were, and as for her education she hadbeen well and duly instructed what to believe, as a good child should. "This was her answer to the article in which all the folk-lore ofDomremy, all the fairy tales, had been collected into a solemn statementof heresy. The matter of dress was once more treated in endless detail, with many interjected questions and reports of what she had alreadysaid: and at the end, answering the statement that woman's dress wasmost fit for woman's work, Jeanne added the quick _mot_: "As for theusual work of women, there are enough of other women to do it. " Onanother occasion when the report ran that she claimed to have done allthings by the counsel of God, she interrupted and said "that it oughtto be, all that I have done well. " To her former answer that she hadyielded to the desire of the French knights in attacking Paris, sheadded the fine words, "It seemed to me that it was their duty to attacktheir adversaries. " In respect to her visions she added to her formeranswer, "that she had not asked advice of bishop, curé, or any otherbefore believing her revelations, but had many times prayed God toreveal them to others of her party. " About calling her saints when sherequired their aid she added, that she asked God and Our Lady to sendher council and comfort, and immediately her heavenly visitors came; andthat this was the prayer she made:

"Gentle God, in honour of Your(1) passion, I pray You, if You love me, that You would reveal to me how I ought to answer these people of theChurch. I know well by what command it was that I took this dress, butI know not in what manner I ought to give it up. For this may it pleaseYou to teach me. "

In respect to the reproach that she had been a general in the war (_chefde guerre_), she explained that if she were, it was to drive out theEnglish, repelling the accusation that she had assumed this title inpride; and to that which accused her of preferring to live among men, she explained that when she was in a lodging she generally had a womanwith her; but that when engaged in war she lived in her clothes wheneverthere was not a woman present. In respect to her hope of escapingfrom prison, she was asked if her council had thrown any light on thatquestion, and replied, "I have yet to tell you. " Manchon, theclerk, makes a note upon his margin at these words, "Proudlyanswered"--_superbe responsum_. 

This re-examination lasted for two long days, the 27th and 28th ofMarch. On several points Jeanne requested that she might be allowed togive an answer on Saturday, and accordingly, on Saturday, the last dayof March, Easter Eve, she was visited in prison by the Bishop andseven or eight assessors. She was then asked if she would submit tothe judgment of the Church on earth all that she had done and said, specially in things that concerned her trial. She answered that shewould submit to the judgment of the Church militant, provided that itdid not enforce anything that was impossible. She explained thatwhat she called impossible was to acknowledge that the visions andrevelations came otherwise than from God, or that what she had done wasnot on the part of God: these she would never deny or revoke for anypower on earth: and that which our Lord had commanded or should command, she would not give up for any living man, and this would be impossibleto her. And in case the Church should command her to do anythingcontrary to the command given her by God she would not do it for anyreason whatsoever. Asked whether she would submit to the Church if theChurch militant pronounced that her revelations were delusions or fromthe devil, or superstitious, or evil things, she answered that she wouldrefer everything to our Lord, whose command she always obeyed; and thatshe knew well that everything had come to her by the commandment of God;and that what she had affirmed during this trial to have been done bythe commandment of God it would be impossible for her to deny. And incase the Church militant commanded her to go against God, she wouldsubmit herself to no man in this world but to our Lord, whose goodcommandment she had always obeyed. She was asked if she did not believethat she was subject to the Church on earth, that is, to our Holy Fatherthe Pope, the Cardinals, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church. She answered, "_Yes, our Lord being served first_. " Asked if she haddirections from her voices not to submit to the Church militant whichis on earth, nor to its judgment, she replied that she does not answeraccording to what comes into her head, but that when she replies it isby commandment; and that she has never been told not to obey the Church, our Lord being served first (_noster Sire premier servi_). 

Other less formal particulars come to us long after, from variouswitnesses at the _procès de rehabilitation_, in which a lively pictureis given of this scene. Frère Isambard had apparently managed, as washis wont, to get close to the prisoner, and to whisper to her to appealto the Council of Bâle. "What is this Council of Bâle?" she asked in thesame tone. Isambard replied that it was the "congregation of the wholeChurch, Catholic and Universal, and that there would be as many there onher side as on that of the English. " "Ah!" she cried, "since there willbe some of our party in that place, I will willingly yield and submitto the Council of Bâle, to our Holy Father the Pope, and to the sacredCouncil. "(2) And immediately--continues the deposition--the Bishop ofBeauvais cried out, "Silence, in the devil's name!" and told the notaryto take no notice of what she said, that she would submit herself to theCouncil of Bâle; whereupon a second cry burst from the bosom of Jeanne, "You write what is against me, but you will not write what is for me. ""Because of these things, the English and their officers threatenedterribly the said Frère Isambard, warning him that if he did not holdhis peace he would be thrown in the Seine. " No notice whatever is takenof any such interruption in the formal record. It must have been beforethis time that Jean de la Fontaine disappeared. He left Rouen secretlyand never returned, nor does he ever appear again. Frère Isambard issaid to have taken temporary refuge in his convent; they scattered, _de par l'diable_, according to the Christian adjuration of Mgr. DeBeauvais; though l'Advenu would seem to have held his ground, and servedas Confessor to Jeanne in her agony, at which Frère Isambard was alsopresent. We are told that the Deputy Inquisitor Lemâitre, he who hadbeen got to lend the aid of his presence with such difficulty, fiercelywarned the authorities that he would have no harm done to those twofriars, from which we may infer that he too had leanings towards theMaid; and these honest and loyal men, well deserving of their countryand of mankind, should not lose their record when the tragic story of somuch human treachery and baseness has to be told. 

*****

After this there came a long pause, full of much business to the judges, councillors, and clerks who had to reduce the seventy articles totwelve, in order to forward a summary of the case to the University ofParis for their judgment. Jeanne in the meantime had been left, but notneglected, in her prison. The great Feast of Easter had passed withoutany sacred consolation of the Church; but Monseigneur de Beauvais, in his kindness, sent her a carp to keep the feast withal, if not anyspiritual food. It was quite congenial to the spirit of the time toimagine that the carp had been poisoned, and such a thought seems tohave crossed the mind of Jeanne, who was very ill after eating of it, and like to die. But it was not thus, poisoned in prison, that it wouldhave suited any of her persecutors to let her die. As a matter of fact, as soon as it was known that she was ill, the best doctors procurablewere sent to the prison with peremptory orders to prolong her lifeand cure her at any cost. But for a little time we lose sight ofthe sick-bed on which the unfortunate Maid lay fully dressed, neverrelinquishing the garb which was her protection, with her feet chainedto her uneasy couch. Even at the moment when her life hung in thebalance we read of no indulgence granted in this respect, no unlockingof the infamous chain, nor substitution of a gentler nurse for theattendant _houspillers_, who were her guards night and day. 

When the Bishop and his court had completed their business and sent offto Paris the important document on which so much depended, they foundthemselves at leisure to return to Jeanne, to inquire after her healthand to make her "a charitable admonition. " It was on the 18th of April, after the silence of more than a fortnight, that their visit was madewith this benevolent purpose. Seven of her judges attended the Bishopinto the sick-chamber. They had come, he assured her, charitably andfamiliarly, to visit her in her sickness and to carry her comfort andconsolation. Most of these men were indeed familiar enough: she had seentheir faces already through many a dreadful day, though there were oneor two which were new and strange, come to stare at her in the depthsof her distress. Cauchon reminded her how much and how carefully she hadbeen questioned by the most wise and learned men; and that those therepresent were ready to do anything for the salvation of her soul andbody in every possible way, by instructing or advising her. He added, however, that if she still refused to accept advice, and to actaccording to the counsel of the Church, she was in the greatestdanger--to which she replied:

"It seems to me, being so ill as I am, that I am in great danger ofdeath. And if it is thus that God pleases to decide for me, I ask of youto be allowed to confess and receive my Saviour, and to be laid in holyground. "

"If you desire to have the rites and sacraments of the Church, " saidCauchon, "you must do as good Catholics ought to do, submit to HolyChurch. " She answered, "I can say no other thing to you. " She was thentold that if she was in fear of death through sickness she ought all themore to amend her life; but that she could not have the privilegesof the Church as a Catholic, if she did not submit to the Church. Sheanswered: "If my body dies in prison, I hope that you will bury me inconsecrated ground: yet if not, I still hope in our Lord. "

She was then reminded that she had said in her trial--if anything hadbeen said or done by her against our Christian faith ordained by ourLord, that she would not stand by it. She answered, "I refer to theanswer I made, and to our Lord. "

It was then asked of her, since she believed herself to have had manyrevelations from God by St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret, whether if there should appear some good creature (_sic_) who professedto have had a revelation from God in respect to her, she would believethat? She answered that there was no Christian in the world who couldcome to her professing to have had a revelation, of whom she should notknow whether he spoke the truth or not: she would know it through St. Catherine and St. Margaret. 

Asked, if she could not imagine that God might reveal something to agood creature who might be unknown to her, she answered: "Yes; but Iwould not believe either man or woman without a sign. "

Asked, if she believed that the Holy Scripture was revealed by God, sheanswered, "You know that I do, and it is good to know. "

The last answer she made in respect to submission to Holy Church wasthis, "Whatever may happen to me I will neither do nor say anythingelse, for I have answered before, during the trial. "

She was then "exhorted powerfully by the venerable doctors present"(four are mentioned by name) to submit to our Mother the Church, withmany authorities and examples drawn from the Holy Scriptures; andfinally, Magister Nicolas Midi made her an exhortation from Matthewxviii. : "If your brother trespass against you, " and what follows, "Ifhe will not hear the Church, let him be to you as a heathen man anda publican. " This was expounded to Jeanne in the French tongue and, finally, she was told that if she would not obey and submit to theChurch she must be given up as if she was a Saracen. To which Jeannereplied that she was a good Christian and well baptised, and that shedesired to die as a Christian. She was then asked whether, since shebegged leave of the Church to receive her Saviour, she would submitto the Church if it were promised to her that she should receive. Sheanswered that she would say no more than she had said; that she lovedGod, served Him, and was a good Christian, and would aid and uphold theHoly Church with all her power. Asked if she wished that a beautifulprocession should be made for her to restore her to health, she answeredthat she would be glad if the Church and the Catholics would pray forher. 

For another fortnight Jeanne was sent back into the silence, and to herown thoughts, which must have grown heavier and heavier as the wearydays went on, and no sound of approaching deliverance came, no rumourof help at hand. All was quiet and safe at Rouen; amid the babble of thecourtyard which she might hear fitfully when her guardians were quieterthan usual, there was not one word which brought the hope of a Frencharmy at hand, or of any movement to rescue her. All was silent in theworld around, not a breath of hope, not the whisper of a friend. It wasnot till the 2d of May that the dreadful blank was again broken, and shewas called to the great hall of the castle for another interview withher tormentors. When she was led into the hall it was full, as in thefirst sitting, sixty-three judges in all being present. The interesthad flagged or the pity had grown as the trial dragged its slow lengthalong; but now, when every day the verdict was expected from Paris, theinterest had risen again. On her way from her prison to the hall, it wasnecessary to pass the door of the castle chapel: and here once or twiceMassieu, the officer of the court, had permitted her to pause and kneeldown as she passed. This was all the celebration of the Paschal Feastthat was permitted to Jeanne. The compassionate official, however, wasdiscovered in this small service of charity, and sternly reprimandedand threatened. Henceforward she had to pass without even a longing lookthrough the door at the altar on which was the holy sacrament. 

She came in on the renewed sitting of the 2d May to find the assembledpriests settling themselves, after the address which had been made tothem, to hear another address which John de Chasteillon, Archdeacon, hadprepared for herself, in which he said much that was good both for bodyand soul, to which she consented. He had a list of twelve articles inhis hands, and explained and expounded them to her, as they were theoccasion of the sitting. He then "admonished her in charity, " explainingthat those who were faithful to Christ hold firmly and closely to theChristian creed, and adjuring her to consent and to amend her ways. Tothis Jeanne answered: "Read your book, " meaning the schedule held byMonseigneur the Archdeacon, "and then I will answer you. I refer myselfto God my master in all things; and I love Him with all my heart. "

To read this book, however, was precisely what Monseigneur theArchdeacon had no intention of doing. She was never allowed to hear thetwelve articles upon which the verdict against her was founded; but thespeaker gave her a long discourse by way of explanation, following moreor less the schedule which he held. This "monition general, " however, elicited no detailed reply from Jeanne, who answered briefly with someimpatience, "I refer myself to my judge, who is the King of Heavenand earth. " The "Lord Archdeacon" then proceeded to "monitionsparticulares. "

It was then once more explained to her that this reference to God alonewas a refusal to submit to the Church militant, and she was instructedin the authority of the Church, which it was the duty of every Christianto believe--_unam sanctam Ecclesiam_ always guided by the Holy Spiritand which could not err, to the judgment of which every question shouldbe referred. She answered: "I believe in the Church here below; but mydoings and sayings, as I have already said, I refer and submit to God. Ibelieve that the Church militant cannot err or fail; but as for my deedsand words I put them all before God, who has made me do that whichI have done"; she also said that she submitted herself to God, herCreator, who had made her do everything, and referred everything to Him, and to Him alone. 

She was then asked, if she would have no judge on earth and if ourHoly Father the Pope were not her judge; she answered: "I will tell younothing more. I have a good master, that is our Lord, on whom I dependfor everything, and not an any other. "

She was then told that if she would not believe the Church and thearticle _Ecclesiam sanctam Catholicam_, that she might be reckoned asa heretic and punished by burning: to which she answered: "I can saynothing else to you; and if I saw the fire before me, I should say onlythat which I say, and could do nothing else. " (Once more at this pointthe clerk writes on his margin, "Proud reply"--_Superba responsio_--butwhether in admiration or in blame it would be hard to say. )

Asked, if the Council General, or the Holy Father, Cardinals, etc. , werethere--whether she would submit to them. "You shall have no other answerfrom me, " she said. 

Asked, if she would submit to our Holy Father the Pope: she answered, "Take me to him and I will answer him, " but would say no more. 

Questioned in respect to her dress, she answered, that she wouldwillingly accept a long dress and a woman's hood to go to church toreceive her Saviour, provided that, as she had already said, she wereallowed to wear it on that occasion only, and then to take back thatwhich she at present wore. Further, when it was set before her that shewore that dress without any need, being in prison, she answered, "WhenI have done that for which I was sent by God, I will then take back awoman's dress. " Asked, if she thought she did well in being dressed likea man, she answered, "I refer every thing to our Lord. "

Again, after the exhortation made to her, namely, that in sayingthat she did well and did not sin in wearing that dress, and in thecircumstances which concerned her assuming and wearing it, and insaying that God and the saints made her do so--she blasphemed, and asis contained in this schedule, erred and did evil: she answered that shenever blasphemed God or the saints. 

She was then admonished to give up that dress, and no longer to think itwas right, and to return to the garb of a woman; but answered that shewould make no change in this respect. 

Concerning her revelations: she replied in regard to them, that shereferred everything to her judge, that is God, and that her revelationswere from God, without any other medium. 

Asked concerning the sign given to the King if she would refer tothe Archbishop of Rheims, the Sire de Boussac, Charles de Bourbon, LaTremouille, and La Hire, to them or to any one of them, who, accordingto what she formerly said, had seen the crown, and were present when theangel brought it, and gave it to the Archbishop; or if she would referto any others of her party who might write under their seals that it wasso; she answered, "Send a messenger, and I will write to them about thewhole trial": but otherwise she was not disposed to refer to them. 

In respect to her presumption in divining the future, etc. , sheanswered, "I refer everything to my judge who is God, and to what I havealready answered, which is written in the book. "

Asked, if two or three or four knights of her party were to bebrought here under a safe conduct, whether she would refer to them herapparitions and other things contained in this trial; answered, "Letthem come and then I will answer:" but otherwise she was not willing torefer to anyone. 

Asked whether, at the Church of Poitiers where she was examined, she hadsubmitted to the Church, she answered, "Do you hope to catch me in thisway, and by that draw advantage to yourselves?"

In conclusion, "afresh and abundantly, " she was admonished to submitherself to the Church, on pain of being abandoned by the Church; for ifthe Church left her she would be in great danger of body and of soul;and she might well put herself in peril of eternal fire for the soul, aswell as of temporal fire for the body, by the sentence of other judges. "You will not do this which you say against me, without doing injury toyour own bodies and souls, " she said. 

Asked, whether she could give a reason why she would not submit to theChurch: but to this she would make no additional reply. 

Again a week passed in busy talk and consultation without, in silenceand desertion within. On the 9th of May the prisoner was again led, thistime to the great tower, apparently the torture chamber of the castle, where she found nine of her judges awaiting her, and was once moreadjured to speak the truth, with the threat of torture if she continuedto refuse. Never was her attitude more calm, more dignified and lofty inits simplicity, than at this grim moment. 

"Truly, " she replied, "if you tear the limbs from my body, and my soulout of it, I can say nothing other than what I have said; or if I saidanything different, I should afterwards say that you had compelled me todo it by force. " She added that on the day of the Holy Cross, the 3d ofMay past, she had been comforted by St. Gabriel. She believed that itwas St. Gabriel: and she knew by her voices that it was St. Gabriel. Shehad asked counsel of her voices whether she should submit to the Church, because the priests pressed her so strongly to submit: but it had beensaid to her that if she desired our Lord to help her she must dependupon Him for everything. She added that she knew well that our Lord hadalways been the master of all she did, and that the Enemy had nothingto do with her deeds. Also she had asked her voices if she should beburned, and the said voices had replied to her that she was to wait forthe Lord and He would help her. 

Afterwards in respect to the crown which had been handed by the angel tothe Archbishop of Rheims, she was asked if she would refer to him. Sheanswered: "Bring him here, that I may hear what he says, and then Ishall answer you; he will not dare to say the contrary of that which Ihave said to you. "

The Archbishop of Rheims had been her constant enemy; all the hindrancesthat had occurred in her active life, and the constant attempts madeto balk her even in her brief moment of triumph, came from him and hisassociate La Trémouille. He was the last person in the world to whomJeanne naturally would have appealed. Perhaps that was the admirablereason why he was suggested in this dreadful crisis of her fate. 

A few days later, it was discussed among those dark inquisitors whetherthe torture should be applied or not. Finally, among thirteen there werebut two (let not the voice of sacred vengeance be silent on their shamethough after four centuries and more), Thomas de Courcelles, first oftheologians, cleverest of ecclesiastical lawyers, mildest of men, andNicolas L'Oyseleur, the spy and traitor, who voted for the torture. Oneman most reasonably asked why she should be put to torture when theyhad ample material for judgment without it? One cannot but feel thatthe proceedings on this occasion were either intended to beguile theimpatience of the English authorities, eager to be done with the wholebusiness, or to add a quite gratuitous pang to the sufferings of theheroic girl. As the men were not devils, though probably possessed bythis time, the more cruel among them, by the horrible curiosity, innatealas! in human nature, of seeing how far a suffering soul could go, itis probable that the first motive was the true one. The English, Warwickespecially, whose every movement was restrained by this long-pendingaffair, were exceedingly impatient, and tempted at times to take thematter into their own hands, and spoil the perfectness of this wellconstructed work of art, conducted according to all the rules, thebeautiful trial which was dear to the Bishop's heart--and destined tobe, though perhaps in a sense somewhat different to that which he hoped, his chief title to fame. 

Ten days after, the decision of the University of Paris arrived, and agreat assembly of counsellors, fifty-one in all, besides the permanentpresidents, collected together in the chapel of the Archbishop'shouse, to hear that document read, along with many other documents, theindividual opinions of a host of doctors and eminent authorities. After an explanation of the solemn care given by the University to theconsideration of every one of the twelve articles of the indictment, that learned tribunal pronounced its verdict upon each. The length ofthe proceedings makes it impossible to reproduce these. First as to theearly revelations given to Jeanne, described in the first and secondarticles, they are denounced as "murderous, seductive, and perniciousfictions, " the apparitions those of "malignant spirits and devils, Belial, Satan, and Behemoth. " The third article, which concerned herrecognition of the saints, was described more mildly as containingerrors in faith; the fourth, as to her knowledge of future events, wascharacterised as "superstitious and presumptuous divination. " The fifth, concerning her dress, declared her to be "blasphemous and contemptuousof God in His Sacraments. " The sixth, by which she was accused of lovingbloodshed, because she made war against those who did not obey thesummons in her letters bearing the name Jhesus Maria, was declared toprove that she was cruel, "seeking the shedding of blood, seditious, and a blasphemer of God. " The tenor is the same to the end: Blasphemy, superstition, pernicious doctrine, impiety, cruelty, presumption, lying;a schismatic, a heretic, an apostate, an idolator, an invoker of demons. These are the conclusions drawn by the most solemn and weighty tribunalon matters of faith in France. The precautions taken to procure afull and trustworthy judgment, the appeal to each section in turn, theFaculty of Theology, the Faculty of Law, the "Nations, " all separatelyand than all together passing every item in review--are set forth atfull length. Every formality had been fulfilled, every rule followed, every detail was in the fullest order, signed and sealed and attested bysolemn notaries, bristling with well-known names. A beautiful judgment, equal to the trial, which was beautiful too--not a rule omitted exceptthose of justice, fairness, and truth! The doctors sat and listened withevery fine professional sense satisfied. 

"If the beforesaid woman, charitably exhorted and admonished bycompetent judges, does not return spontaneously to the Catholic faith, publicly abjure her errors, and give full satisfaction to her judges, she is hereby given up to the secular judge to receive the reward of herdeeds. "

The attendant judges, each in his place, now added their adhesion. Most of them simply stated their agreement with the judgment of theUniversity, or with that of the Bishop of Fecamp, which was a similartenor; a few wished that Jeanne should be again "charitably admonished";many desired that on this selfsame day the final sentence shouldbe pronounced. One among them, a certain Raoul Sauvage (RadulphusSilvestris), suggested that she should be brought before the people ina public place, a suggestion afterwards carried out. Frère Isambarddesired that she should be charitably admonished again and have anotherchance, and that her final fate should still be in the hands of "us herjudges. " The conclusion was that one more "charitable admonition" shouldbe given to Jeanne, and that the law should then take its course. The suggestion that she should make a public appearance had only onesupporter. 

This dark scene in the chapel is very notable, each man rising topronounce what was in reality a sentence of death, --fifty of them almostunanimous, filled no doubt with a hundred different motives, to pleasethis man or that, to win favour, to get into the way of promotion, --butall with a distinct consciousness of the great yet horrible spectacle, the stake, the burning:--though perhaps here and there was one with ahope that perpetual imprisonment, bread of sorrow and water of anguish, might be substituted for that terrible death. Finally, it was decidedthat--always on the side of mercy, as every act proved--the tribunalshould once more "charitably admonish" the prisoner for the salvationof her soul and body, and that after all this "good deliberation andwholesome counsel" the case should be concluded. 

Again there follows a pause of four days. No doubt the Bishop and hisassessors had other things to do, their ecclesiastical functions, their private business, which could not always be put aside because oneforsaken soul was held in suspense day after day. Finally on the 24th ofMay, Jeanne again received in her prison a dignified company, some quitenew and strange to her (indeed the idea may cross the reader's mindthat it was perhaps to show off the interesting prisoner to two newand powerful bishops, the first, Louis of Luxembourg, a relative of herfirst captor, that this last examination was held), nine men in all, crowding her chamber--_exponuntur Johannæ defectus sui_, says therecord--to expound to Jeanne her faults. It was Magister Peter Morice towhom this office was confided. Once more the "schedule" was gone over, and an address delivered laden with all the bad words of the University. "Jeanne, dearest friend, " said the orator at last, "it is now time, atthe end of the trial, to think well what words these are. " She wouldseem to have spoken during this address, at least once--to say thatshe held to everything she had said during the trial. When Morice hadfinished she was once more questioned personally. 

She was asked if she still thought and believed that it was not her dutyto submit her deeds and words to the Church militant, or to any otherexcept God, upon which she replied, "What I have always said and held toduring the trial, I maintain to this moment"; and added that if shewere in judgment and saw the fire lighted, the faggots burning, and theexecutioner ready to rake the fire, and she herself within the fire, she could say nothing else, but would sustain what she had said in hertrial, to death. 

Once more the scribe has written on his margin the words _ResponsioJohannæ superba_--the proud answer of Jeanne. Her raised head, herexpanded breast, something of a splendour of indignation about her, must have moved the man, thus for the third time to send down to us hisdistinctly human impression of the worn out prisoner before her judges. "And immediately the promoter and she refusing to say more, the causewas concluded, " says the record, so formal, sustained within suchpurely abstract limits, yet here and there with a sort of throb andreverberation of the mortal encounter. From the lips of the Inquisitortoo all words seemed to have been taken. It is as when amid the excitedcrowd in the Temple the officers of the Pharisees approaching to layhands on a greater than Jeanne, fell back, not knowing why, and couldnot do their office. This man was silenced also. Two bishops werepresent, and one a great man full of patronage; but not for the richestliving in Normandy could Peter Morice find any more to say. 

These are in one sense the words of Jeanne; the last we have from her inher prison, the last of her consistent and unbroken life. After, therewas a deeper horror to go through, a moment when all her forces failed. Here on the verge of eternity she stands heroic and unyielding, brave, calm, and steadfast as at the outset of her career, the Maid of France. Were the fires lighted and the faggots burning, and she herself withinthe fire, she had no other word to say. 

 (1) It is correct in French to use the second person plural in addressing God, _thou_ being a more intimate and less respectful form of speech. Such a difference is difficult to remember, and troubles the ear. The French, even those who ought to know better, sometimes speak of it as a supreme profanity on the part of the profane English, that they address God as _thou_. 

 (2) The French report goes on, "et requiert ----, " but no more. It is not in the Latin. The scribe was stopped by the Bishop's profane outcry, and forbidden to register the fact she was about to make a direct appeal to the Pope. 

CHAPTER XVI -- THE ABJURATION. MAY 24, 1431. 

On the 23d of May Jeanne was taken back to her prison attended by theofficer of the court, Massieu, her frame still thrilling, her heartstill high, with that great note of constancy yet defiance. She had beenno doubt strongly excited, the commotion within her growing with everyrepetition of these scenes, each one of which promised to be the last. And the fire and the stake and the executioner had come very near toher; no doubt a whole murmuring world of rumour, of strange informationabout herself, never long inaudible, never heard outside of the Castleof Rouen, rose half-comprehended from the echoing courtyard outside andthe babble of her guards within. She would hear even as she was conveyedalong the echoing stone passages something here and there of the popularexpectation:--a burning! the wonderful unheard of sight, which by hookor by crook everyone must see; and no doubt among the English talk shemight now be able to make out something concerning this long businesswhich had retarded all warlike proceedings but which would soon be overnow, and the witch burnt. There must have been some, even among thoserude companions, who would be sorry, who would feel that she was nowitch, yet be helpless to do anything for her, any more than Massieucould, or Frère Isambard: and if it was all for the sake of certainwords to be said, was the wench mad? would it not be better to sayanything, to give up anything rather than be burned at the stake?Jeanne, notwithstanding the wonderful courage of her last speech, must have returned to her cell with small illusion possible to herintelligent spirit. The stake had indeed come very near, the flamesalready dazzled her eyes, she must have felt her slender form shrinktogether at the thought. All that long night, through the early daylightof the May morning did she lie and ponder, as for far less reasonsso many of us have pondered as we lay wakeful through those morningwatches. God's promises are great, but where is the fulfilment? We askfor bread and he gives us, if not a stone, yet something which we cannotrealise to be bread till after many days. Jeanne's voices had neverpaused in their pledge to her of succour. "Speak boldly, God will helpyou--fear nothing"; there would be aid for her before three months, and great victory. They went on saying so, though the stake was alreadybeing raised. What did they mean? what did they mean? Could she stilltrust them? or was it possible----?

Her heart was like to break. At their word she would have facedthe fire. She meant to do so now, notwithstanding the terrible, theheartrending ache of hope that was still in her. But they did not giveher that heroic command. Still and always, they said God will helpyou, our Lord will stand by you. What did that mean? It must meandeliverance, deliverance! What else could it mean? If she held her headhigh as she returned to the horrible monotony of that prison so oftenleft with hope, so often re-entered in sadness, it must soon havedropped upon her tired bosom. Slowly the clouds had settled round her. Over and over again had she affirmed them to be true--these voices thathad guided her steps and led her to victory. And they had promised herthe aid of God if she went forward boldly, and spoke and did not fear. But now every way of salvation was closing; all around her were fiercesoldiers thirsting for her blood, smooth priests who admonished her incharity, threatening her with eternal fire for the soul, temporal firefor the body. She felt that fire, already blowing towards her as if onthe breath of the evening wind, and her girlish flesh shrank. Was thatwhat the voices had called deliverance? was that the grand victory, theaid of the Lord?

It may well be imagined that Jeanne slept but little that night; shehad reached the lowest depths; her soul had begun to lose itself inbitterness, in the horror of a doubt. The atmosphere of her prisonbecame intolerable, and the noise of her guards keeping up their roughjests half through the night, their stamping and clamour, and the clangof their arms when relieved. Early next morning a party of her usualvisitors came in upon her to give her fresh instruction and advice. Something new was about to happen to-day. She was to be led forth, tobreathe the air of heaven, to confront the people, the raging sea ofmen's faces, all the unknown world about her. The crowd had never beenunfriendly to Jeanne. It had closed about her, almost wherever she wasvisible, with sweet applause and outcries of joy. Perhaps a little hopestirred her heart in the thought of being surrounded once more by thecommon folk, though probably it did not occur to her to think of theseNorman strangers as her own people. And a great day was before her, aday in which something might still be done, in which deliverance mightyet come. L'Oyseleur, who was one of her visitors, adjured her nowto change her conduct, to accept whatever means of salvation might beoffered to her. There was no longer any mention of Pope or Council, but only of the Church to which she ought to yield. How it was that hepreserved his influence over her, having been proved to be a memberof the tribunal that judged her, and not a fellow-prisoner, nor afellow-countryman, nor any of the things he had professed to be, no oncecan tell us; but evidently he had managed to do so. Jeanne would seem tohave received him without signs of repulsion or displeasure. Indeedshe seems to have been ready to hear anyone, to believe in those whoprofessed to wish her well, even when she did not follow their counsel. 

It would require, however, no great persuasion on L'Oyseleur's part toconvince her that this was a more than usually important day, and thatsomething decisive must be done, now or never. Why should she beso determined to resist her only chance of safety? If she were butdelivered from the hands of the English, safe in the gentler keeping ofthe Church, there would be time to think of everything, even to make herpeace with her voices who would surely understand if, for the saving ofher life, and out of terror for the dreadful fire, she abandonedthem for a moment. She had disobeyed them at Beaurevoir and they hadforgiven. One faltering word now, a mark of her hand upon a paper, andshe would be safe--even if still all they said was true; and if indeedand in fact, after buoying her up from day to day, such a dreadful thingmight be as that they were not true----

The traitor was at her ear whispering; the cold chill of disappointment, of disillusion, of sickening doubt was in her heart. 

Then there came into the prison a better man than L'Oyseleur, JeanBeaupère, her questioner in the public trial, the representative of allthese notabilities. What he said was spoken with authority and he camein all seriousness, may not we believe in some kindness too? to warnher. He came with permission of the Bishop, no stealthy visitor. "JeanBeaupère entered alone into the prison of the said Jeanne by permission, and advertised her that she would straightway be taken to the scaffoldto be addressed (_pour y être preschée_), and that if she was a goodChristian she would on that scaffold place all her acts and words underthe jurisdiction of our Holy Mother, the Church, and specially of theecclesiastical judges. " "Accept the woman's dress and do all that youare told, " her other adviser had said. When the car that was to conveyher came to the prison doors, L'Oyseleur accompanied her, no doubt witha show of supporting her to the end. What a change from the confined andgloomy prison to the dazzling clearness of the May daylight, the air, the murmuring streets, the throng that gazed and shouted and followed!Life that had run so low in the prisoner's veins must have bounded upwithin her in response to that sunshine and open sky, and movement andsound of existence--summer weather too, and everything softened in themedium of that soft breathing air, sound and sensation and hope. Shehad been three months in her prison. As the charrette rumbled alongthe roughly paved streets drawing all those crowds after it, a strangeobject appeared to Jeanne's eyes in the midst of the market-place, alofty scaffold with a stake upon it, rising over the heads of the crowd, the logs all arranged ready for the fire, a car waiting below with fourhorses, to bring hither the victim. The place of sacrifice was ready, everything arranged--for whom? for her? They drove her noisily past thatshe might see the preparations. It was all ready; and where then was thegreat victory, the deliverance in which she had believed?

In front of the beautiful gates of St. Ouen there was a different scene. That stately church was surrounded then by a churchyard, a great openspace, which afforded room for a very large assembly. In this wereerected two platforms, one facing the other. On the first sat the courtof judges in number about forty, Cardinal Winchester having a place bythe side of Monseigneur de Beauvais, the president, with several otherbishops and dignified ecclesiastics. Opposite, on the other platform, were a pulpit and a place for the accused, to which Jeanne was conductedby Massieu, who never left her, and L'Oyseleur, who kept as near as hecould, the rest of the platform being immediately covered by lawyers, doctors, all the camp followers, so to speak, of the black army, whocould find footing there. Jeanne was in her usual male dress, thedoublet and hose, with her short-clipped hair--no doubt looking like aslim boy among all this dark crowd of men. The people swayed like asea all about and around--the throng which had gathered in her progressthrough the streets pushing out the crowd already assembled with amovement like the waves of the sea. Every step of the trial allthrough had been attended by preaching, by discourses and reasoning andadmonishments, charitable and otherwise. Now she was to be "preached"for the last time. 

It was Doctor Guillaume Érard who ascended the pulpit, a great preacher, one whom the "copious multitude" ran after and were eager to hear. Hehimself had not been disposed to accept this office, but no doubt, setup there on that height before the eyes of all the people, he thought ofhis own reputation, and of the great audience, and Winchester the morethan king, the great English Prince, the wealthiest and most influentialof men. The preacher took his text from a verse in St. John's Gospel:"A branch cannot bear fruit except it remain in the vine. " The centrecircle containing the two platforms was surrounded by a close ring ofEnglish soldiers, understanding none of it, and anxious only that thewitch should be condemned. 

It was in this strange and crowded scene that the sermon which was longand eloquent began. When it was half over, in one of his fine periodsadmired by all the people, the preacher, after heaping every reproachupon the head of Jeanne, suddenly turned to apostrophise the House ofFrance, and the head of that House, "Charles who calls himself King. ""He has, " cried the preacher, stimulated no doubt by the eye ofWinchester upon him, "adhered, like a schismatic and heretical person ashe is, to the words and acts of a useless woman, disgraced and full ofdishonour; and not he only, but the clergy who are under his sway, andthe nobility. This guilt is thine, Jeanne, and to thee I say that thyKing is a schismatic and a heretic. "

In the full flood of his oratory the preacher was arrested here by thatclear voice that had so often made itself heard through the tumult ofbattle. Jeanne could bear much, but not this. She was used to abusein her own person, but all her spirit came back at this assault on herKing. And interruption to a sermon has always a dramatic and startlingeffect, but when that voice arose now, when the startled speakerstopped, and every dulled attention revived, it is easy to imagine whata stir, what a wonderful, sudden sensation must have arisen in the midstof the crowd. "By my faith, sire, " cried Jeanne, "saving your respect, I swear upon my life that my King is the most noble Christian of allChristians, that he is not what you say. "

The sermon, however, was resumed after this interruption. And finallythe preacher turned to Jeanne, who had subsided from that start ofanimation, and was again the subdued and silent prisoner, her heartoverwhelmed with many heavy thoughts. "Here, " said Èrard, "are my lordsthe judges who have so often summoned and required of you to submit youracts and words to our Holy Mother the Church; because in these acts andwords there are many things which it seemed to the clergy were not goodeither to say or to sustain. "

To which she replied (we quote again from the formal records), "I willanswer you. " And as to her submission to the Church she said: "I havetold them on that point that all the works which I have done and saidmay be sent to Rome, to our Holy Father the Pope, to whom, but to Godfirst, I refer in all. And as for my acts and words I have done all onthe part of God. " She also said that no one was to blame for her actsand words, neither her King nor any other; and if there were faults inthem, the blame was hers and no other's. 

Asked, if she would renounce all that she had done wrong; answered, "Irefer everything to God and to our Holy Father the Pope. "

It was then told her that this was not enough, and that our Holy Fatherwas too far off; also that the Ordinaries were judges each in hisdiocese, and it was necessary that she should submit to our Mother theHoly Church, and that she should confess that the clergy and officersof the Church had a right to determine in her case. And of this she wasadmonished three times. 

After this the Bishop began to read the definitive sentence. When agreat part of it was read, Jeanne began to speak and said that she wouldhold to all that the judges and the Church said, and obey in everythingtheir ordinance and will. And there in the presence of the above-namedand of the great multitude assembled she made her abjuration in themanner that follows:

And she said several times that since the Church said her apparitionsand revelations should not be sustained or believed, she would notsustain them; but in everything submit to the judges and to our Motherthe Holy Church. 

*****

In this strange, brief, subdued manner is the formal record made. Manchon writes on his margin: _At the end of the sentence Jeanne, fearing the fire, said she would obey the Church_. Even into the barelegal document there comes a hush as of awe, the one voice responding inthe silence of the crowd, with a quiver in it; the very animation ofthe previous outcry enhancing the effect of this low and falteringsubmission, _timens igneum_--in fear of the fire. 

The more familiar record, and the recollections long after of thoseeye-witnesses, give us another version of the scene. Èrard, from hispulpit, read the form of abjuration prepared. But Jeanne answered thatshe did not know what abjuration meant, and the preacher calledupon Massieu to explain it to her. "And he" (we quote from his owndeposition), "after excusing himself, said that it meant this: that ifshe opposed the said articles she would be burnt; but he advised her torefer it to the Church universal whether she should abjure or not. Whichthing she did, saying to Èrard, 'I refer to the Church universal whetherI should abjure or not. ' To which Èrard answered, 'You shall abjure atonce or you will be burnt. ' Massieu gives further particulars in anotherpart of the Rehabilitation process. Èrard, he says, asked what he wassaying to the prisoner, and he answered that she would sign if theschedule was read to her; but Jeanne said that she could not write, andthen added that she wished it to be decided by the Church, and oughtnot to sign unless that was done: and also required that she should beplaced in the custody of the Church, and freed from the hands of theEnglish. The same Èrard answered that there had been ample delay, andthat if she did not sign at once she should be burned, and forbadeMassieu to say any more. "

Meanwhile many cries and entreaties came, as far as they dared, fromthe crowd. Some one, in the excitement of the moment, would seem to havepromised that she should be transferred to the custody of the Church. "Jeanne, why will you die? Jeanne, will you not save yourself?" wascalled to her by many a bystander. The girl stood fast, but her heartfailed her in this terrible climax of her suffering. Once she called outover their heads, "All that I did was done for good, and it was wellto do it:"--her last cry. Then she would seem to have recovered insome measure her composure. Probably her agitated brain was unable tounderstand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid allthe increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in thecondition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submittedto the Church, and that she should at once be transferred to anecclesiastical prison. Other suggestions are made, namely, that it was avery short document upon which she hastily in her despair made a cross, and that it was a long one, consisting of several pages, which was shownafterwards with _Jehanne_ scribbled underneath. "In fact, " says Massieu, "she abjured and made a cross with the pen which the witness handed toher:" he, if any one must have known exactly what happened. 

No doubt all this would be imperfectly heard on the other platform. But the agitation must have been visible enough, the spectators closinground the young figure in the midst, the pleadings, the appeals, seconded by many a cry from the crowd. Such a small matter to risk heryoung life for! "Sign, sign; why should you die!" Cauchon had gone onreading the sentence, half through the struggle. He had two sentencesall ready, two courses of procedure, cut and dry: either to absolveher--which meant condemning her to perpetual imprisonment on breadand water: or to carry her off at once to the stake. The English wereimpatient for the last. It is a horrible thing to acknowledge, but it isevidently true. They had never wished to play with her as a cat with amouse, as her learned countrymen had done those three months past; theyhad desired at once to get her out of their way. But the idea of herperpetual imprisonment did not please them at all; the risk of such aprisoner was more than they chose to encounter. Nevertheless there aresome things a churchman cannot do. When it was seen that Jeanne hadyielded, that she had put her mark to something on a paper flourishedforth in somebody's hand in the sunshine, the Bishop turned to theCardinal on his right hand, and asked what he was to do? There was butone answer possible to Winchester, had he been English and Jeanne'snatural enemy ten times over. To admit her to penitence was the onlypracticable way. 

Here arises a great question, already referred to, as to what it wasthat Jeanne signed. She could not write, she could only put her cross onthe document hurriedly read to her, amid the confusion and the murmursof the crowd. The _cédule_ to which she put her sign "contained eightlines:" what she is reported to have signed is three pages long, andfull of detail. Massieu declares certainly that this (the abjurationpublished) was not the one of which mention is made in the trial; "forthe one read by the deponent and signed by the said Jeanne was quitedifferent. " This would seem to prove the fact that a much enlargedversion of an act of abjuration, in its original form strictly confinedto the necessary points and expressed in few words--was afterwardspublished as that bearing the sign of the penitent. Her own admissions, as will be seen, are of the scantiest, scarcely enough to tell as anabjuration at all. 

When the shouts of the people proved that this great step had beentaken, and Winchester had signified his conviction that the penitencemust be accepted, Cauchon replaced one sentence by another andpronounced the prisoner's fate. "Seeing that thou hast returned to thebosom of the Church by the grace of God, and hast revoked and denied allthy errors, we, the Bishop aforesaid, commit thee to perpetual prison, with the bread of sorrow and water of anguish, to purge thy soul bysolitary penitence. " Whether the words reached her over all thosecrowding heads, or whether they were reported to her, or what Jeanneexpected to follow standing there upon her platform, more shamed anddowncast than through all her trial, no one can tell. There seems evento have been a moment of uncertainty among the officials. Some of themcongratulated Jeanne, L'Oyseleur for one pressing forward to say, "Youhave done a good day's work, you have saved your soul. " She herself, excited and anxious, desired eagerly to know where she was not to go. She would seem for the moment to have accepted the fact of her perpetualimprisonment with complete faith and content. It meant to her instantrelief from her hideous prison-house, and she could not contain herimpatience and eagerness. "People of the Church--_gens de' Église_--leadme to your prison; let me be no longer in the hands of the English, " shecried with feverish anxiety. To gain this point, to escape the ironsand the dreadful durance which she had suffered so long, was all herthought. The men about her could not answer this appeal. Some of themno doubt knew very well what the answer must be, and some must haveseen the angry looks and stern exclamation which Warwick addressed toCauchon, deceived like Jeanne by this unsatisfactory conclusion, andthe stir among the soldiers at sight of his displeasure. But perhapsflurried by all that had happened, perhaps hoping to strengthen thevictim in her moment of hope, some of them hurried across to the Bishopto ask where they were to take her. One of these was Pierre Miger, friarof Longueville. Where was she to be taken? In Winchester's hearing, perhaps in Warwick's, what a question to put! An English bishop, saysthis witness turned to him angrily and said to Cauchon that this was a"fauteur de ladite Jeanne, " "_this fellow was also one of them_. "Miger excused himself in alarm as St. Peter did before him, and Cauchonturning upon him commanded grimly that she should be taken back whenceshe came. Thus ended the last hope of the Maid. Her abjuration, which byno just title could be called an abjuration, had been in vain. 

Jeanne was taken back, dismayed and miserable, to the prison which shehad perilled her soul to escape. It was very little she had done inreality, and at that moment she could scarcely yet have realised whatshe had done, except that it had failed. At the end of so long andbitter a struggle she had thrown down her arms--but for what? to escapethose horrible gaolers and that accursed room with its ear of Dionysius, its Judas hole in the wall. The bitterness of the going back was beyondwords. We hear of no word that she said when she realised the hideousfact that nothing was changed for her; the bitter waters closed over herhead. Again the chains to be locked and double locked that bound her toher dreadful bed, again the presence of those men who must have beenall the more odious to her from the momentary hope that she had got freefrom them for ever. 

The same afternoon the Vicar-Inquisitor, who had never been hardupon her, accompanied by Nicole Midi, by the young seraphic doctor, Courcelles, and L'Oyseleur, along with various other ecclesiasticalpersons, visited her prison. The Inquisitor congratulated and almostblessed her, sermonising as usual, but briefly and not ungently, thoughwith a word of warning that should she change her mind and return to herevil ways there would be no further place for repentance. As a returnfor the mercy and clemency of the Church, he required her immediatelyto put on the female dress which his attendants had brought. There issomething almost ludicrous, could we forget the tragedy to follow, inthe bundle of humble clothing brought by such exalted personages, withthe solemnity which became a thing upon which hung the issues of life ordeath. Jeanne replied with the humility of a broken spirit. "I take themwillingly, " she said, "and in everything I will obey the Church. " Thensilence closed upon her, the horrible silence of the prison, full ofhidden listeners and of watching eyes. 

Meantime there was great discontent and strife of tongues outside. Itwas said that many even of the doctors who condemned her would fain haveseen Jeanne removed to some less dangerous prison: but Monseigneur deBeauvais had to hold head against the great English authorities who wereout of all patience, fearing that the witch might still slip throughtheir fingers and by her spells and incantations make the heart of thetroops melt once more within them. If the mind of the Church had been ascharitable as it professed to be, I doubt if all the power of Rome couldhave got the Maid now out of the English grip. They were exasperated, and felt that they too, as well as the prisoner, had been played with. But the Bishop had good hope in his mind, still to be able to contenthis patrons. Jeanne had abjured, it was true, but the more he inquiredinto that act, the less secure he must have felt about it. And she mightrelapse; and if she relapsed there would be no longer any place forrepentance. And it is evident that his confidence in the power of theclothes was boundless. In any case a few days more would make all clear. 

They did not have many days to wait. There are two, to all appearance, well-authenticated stories of the cause of Jeanne's "relapse. " Oneaccount is given by Frère Isambard, whom she told in the presence ofseveral others, that she had been assaulted in her cell by a _MillourtAnglois_, and barbarously used, and in self-defence had resumed againthe man's dress which had been left in her cell. The story of Massieuis different: To him Jeanne explained that when she asked to be releasedfrom her bed on the morning of Trinity Sunday, her guards took away herfemale dress which she was wearing, and emptied the sack containing theother upon her bed. She appealed to them, reminding them that these wereforbidden to her; but got no answer except a brutal order to get up. Itis very probable that both stories are true. Frère Isambard found herweeping and agitated, and nothing is more probable than this was theoccasion on which Warwick heard her cries, and interfered to save her. Massieu's version, of which he is certain, was communicated to him aday or two after when they happened to be alone together. It was on theThursday before Trinity Sunday that she put on the female dress, but itwould seem that rumours on the subject of a relapse had begun to spreadeven before the Sunday on which that event happened: and Beaupèreand Midi were sent by the Bishop to investigate. But they were veryill-received in the Castle, sworn at by the guards, and forced to goback without seeing Jeanne, there being as yet, it appeared, nothingto see. On the morning of the Monday, however, the rumours arose withgreater force; and no doubt secret messages must have informed theBishop that the hoped-for relapse had taken place. He set out himselfaccordingly, accompanied by the Vicar-Inquisitor and attended by eightof the familiar names so often quoted, triumphant, important, no doubtwith much show of pompous solemnity, to find out for himself. The Castlewas all in excitement, report and gossip already busy with the new eventso trifling, so all-important. There was no idea now of turning back thevisitors. The prison doors were eagerly thrown open, and there indeedonce more, in her tunic and hose, was Jeanne, whom they had left fourdays before painfully contemplating the garments they had given her, andhumbly promising obedience. The men burst in upon her with an outcry ofastonishment. What she had changed her dress again? "Yes, " she replied, "she had resumed the costume of a man. " There was no triumph in what shesaid, but rather a subdued tone of sadness, as of one who in the mostdesperate strait has taken her resolution and must abide by it, whethershe likes it or not. She was asked why she had resumed that dress, andwho had made her do so. There was no question of anything else at first. The tunic and _gippon_ were at once enough to decide her fate. 

She answered that she had done it by her own will, no one influencingher to do so; and that she preferred the dress of a man to that of awoman. 

She was reminded that she had promised and sworn not to resume the dressof a man. She answered that she was not aware she had ever sworn or hadmade any such oath. 

She was asked why she had done it. She answered that it was more lawfulto wear a man's dress among men, than the dress of a woman; and alsothat she had taken it back because the promise made to her had not beenkept, that she should hear the mass, and receive her Saviour, and bedelivered from her irons. 

She was asked if she had not abjured that dress, and sworn not to resumeit. She answered that she would rather die than be left in irons; but ifthey would allow her to go to mass and take her out of her irons and puther in a gracious prison, and a woman with her, she would be good, anddo whatever the Church pleased. 

She was then asked suddenly, as if there had been no condemnation of hervoices as lying fables, whether since Thursday she had heard them again. To this she answered, recovering a little courage, "Yes. "

She was asked what they said to her; she answered that they said God hadmade known to her by St. Catherine and St. Margaret the great pity therewas of the treason to which she had consented by making abjuration andrevocation in order to save her life: and that she had earned damnationfor herself to save her life. Also that before Thursday her voices hadtold her that she should do what she did that day, that on the scaffoldthey had told her to answer the preachers boldly, and that this preacherwhom she called a false preacher had accused her of many things shenever did. She also added that if she said God had not sent her shewould damn herself, for true it was that God had sent her. Also that hervoices had told her since, that she had done a great sin in confessingthat she had sinned; but that for fear of the fire she had said thatwhich she had said. 

She was asked (all over again) if she believed that these voices werethose of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. She answered, Yes, they wereso; and from God. And as for what had been said to her on the scaffoldthat she had spoken lies and boasted concerning St. Catherine and St. Margaret, she had not intended any such thing. Also she said that shenever intended to deny her apparitions, or to say that they were notSt. Catherine and St. Margaret. All that she had done was in fear of thefire, and she had denied nothing but what was contrary to truth; andshe said that she would like better to make her penitence all at onetime--that is to say, in dying, than to endure a long penitence inprison. Also that she had never done anything against God or the faithwhatever they might have made her say; and that for what was in theschedule of the abjuration she did not know what it was. Also she saidthat she never intended to revoke anything so long as it pleased ourLord. At the end she said that if her judges would have her do so, shemight put on again her female dress; but for the rest she would do nomore. 

"What need we any further witness; for we ourselves have heard of hisown mouth. " Jeanne's protracted, broken, yet continuous apology anddefence, overawed her judges; they do not seem to have interrupted itwith questions. It was enough and more than enough. She had relapsed;the end of all things had come, the will of her enemies could now beaccomplished. No one could say she had not had full justice done her;every formality had been fulfilled, every lingering formula carried out. Now there was but one thing before her, whose sad young voice with manypauses thus sighed forth its last utterance; and for her judges, onelast spectacle to prepare, and the work to complete which it had takenthem three long months to do. 

CHAPTER XVIII -- THE SACRIFICE. MAY 31, 1431. 

It is not necessary to be a good man in order to divine what in certaincircumstances a good and pure spirit will do. The Bishop of Beauvais hadentertained no doubt as to what would happen. He knew exactly, witha perspicuity creditable to his perceptions at least, that, notwithstanding the effect which his theatrical _mise en scène_ hadproduced upon the imagination of Jeanne, no power in heaven or earthwould induce that young soul to content itself with a lie. He knew it, though lies were his daily bread; the children of this world are wiserin their generation than the children of light. He had bidden hisEnglish patrons to wait a little, and now his predictions weretriumphantly fulfilled. It is hard to believe of any man that on sucha certainty he could have calculated and laid his devilish plans; butthere would seem to have existed in the mediæval churchman a certainhorrible thirst for the blood of a relapsed heretic which was peculiarto their age and profession, and which no better principle in their ownminds could subdue. It was their appetite, their delight of sensation, in distinction from the other appetites perhaps scarcely less cruelwhich other men indulged with no such horrified denunciation from therest of the world. Others, it is evident, shared with Cauchon that sharpsensation of dreadful pleasure in finding her out; young Courcelles, somodest and unassuming and so learned, among the rest; not L'Oyseleur, itappears by the sequel. That Judas, like the greater traitor, wasstruck to the heart; but the less bad man who had only persecuted, notbetrayed, stood high in superior virtue, and only rejoiced that at lastthe victim was ready to drop into the flames which had been so carefullyprepared. 

The next morning, Tuesday after Trinity Sunday, the witnesses hurriedwith their news to the quickly summoned assembly in the chapel of theArchbishop's house; thirty-three of the judges, having been hastilycalled together, were there to hear. Jeanne had relapsed; the sinnerescaped had been re-caught; and what was now to be done? One by one eachman rose again and gave his verdict. Once more Egidius, Abbot of Fécamp, led the tide of opinion. There was but one thing to be done: to giveher up to the secular justice, "praying that she might be gentlydealt with. " Man after man added his voice "to that of Abbot of Fécampaforesaid"--that she might be gently dealt with! Not one of them couldbe under any doubt what gentle meaning would be in the execution;but apparently the words were of some strange use in salving theirconsciences. 

The decree was pronounced at once without further formalities. In pointof view of the law, there should have followed another trial, moreevidence, pleadings, and admonitions. We may be thankful to Monseigneurde Beauvais that he now defied law, and no longer prolonged the uselessceremonials of that mockery of justice. It is said that in coming out ofthe prison, through the courtyard full of Englishmen, where Warwickwas in waiting to hear what news, the Bishop greeted them with all thesatisfaction of success, laughing and bidding them "Make good cheer, thething is done. " In the same spirit of satisfaction was the rapid actionof the further proceedings. On Tuesday she was condemned, summoned onWednesday morning at eight 'clock to the Old Market of Rouen to hearher sentence, and there, without even that formality, the penalty was atonce carried out. No time, certainly, was lost in this last stage. 

All the interest of the heart-rending tragedy now turns to the prisonwhere Jeanne woke in the early morning without, as yet, any knowledgeof her fate. It must be remembered that the details of this wonderfulscene, which we have in abundance, are taken from reports made twentyyears after by eye-witnesses indeed, but men to whom by that time it hadbecome the only policy to represent Jeanne in the brightest colours, and themselves as her sympathetic friends. There is no doubt thatso remarkable an occurrence as her martyrdom must have made a deepimpression on the minds of all those who were in any way actors inor spectators of that wonderful scene. And every word of all thesedifferent reports is on oath; but notwithstanding, a touch ofunconscious colour, a more favourable sentiment, influenced by thefeeling of later days, may well have crept in. With this warning wemay yet accept these depositions as trustworthy, all the more for theatmosphere of truth, perfectly realistic, and in no way idealised, which is in every description of the great catastrophe; in which Jeannefigures as no supernatural heroine, but as a terrified, tormented, andoften trembling girl. 

On the fatal morning very early, Brother Martin l'Advenu appeared in thecell of the Maid. He had a mingled tale to tell--first "to announceto her her approaching death, and to lead her to true contrition andpenitence; and also to hear her confession, which the said l'Advenu didvery carefully and charitably. " Jeanne on her part received the newswith no conventional resignation or calm. Was it possible that she hadbeen deceived and really hoped for mercy? She began to weep and to cryat the sudden stroke of fate. Notwithstanding the solemnity of her lastdeclaration, that she would rather bear her punishment all at once thanto endure the long punishment of her prison, her heart failed beforethe imminent stake, the immediate martyrdom. She cried out to heaven andearth: "My body, which has never been corrupted, must it be burned toashes to-day!" No one but Jeanne knew at what cost she had kept herperfect purity; was it good for nothing but to be burned, that youngbody not nineteen years old? "Ah, " she said, "I would rather be beheadedseven times than burned! I appeal to God against all these great wrongsthey do me. " But after a while the passion wore itself out, the child'soutburst was stilled; calming herself, she knelt down and made herconfession to the compassionate friar, then asked for the sacrament, to"receive her Saviour" as she had so often prayed and entreated before. It would appear that this had not been within Friar Martin's commission. He sent to ask the Bishop's leave, and it was granted "anything sheasked for"--as they give whatever he may wish to eat to a condemnedconvict. But the Host was brought into the prison without ceremony, without accompanying candles or vestment for the priest. There arealways some things which are insupportable to a man. Brother Martincould bear the sight of the girl's anguish, but not to administer toher a diminished rite. He sent again to demand what was needful, out ofrespect for the Holy Sacrament and the present victim. And his requesthad come, it would seem, to some canon or person in authority whoseheart had been touched by the wonderful Maid in her long martyrdom. Thisnameless sympathiser did all that a man could do. He sent the Host witha train of priests chanting litanies as they went through the streets, with torches burning in the pure early daylight; some of these exhortedthe people who knelt as they passed, to pray for her. She must haveheard in her prison the sound of the bell, the chant of the clergy, thepause of awe, and then the rising, irregular murmur of the voices, thatsound of prayer never to be mistaken. Pray for her! At last the city wastouched to its heart. There is no sign that it had been sympathetic toJeanne before; it was half English or more. But she was about to die:she had stood bravely against the world and answered like a trueMaid; and they had now seen her led through their streets, a girl justnineteen. The popular imagination at least was subjugated for the time. 

Thus Jeanne for the first time, after all the feasts were over, receivedat last "her Saviour" as she said, the consecration of that rite whichHe himself had instituted before He died. But she was not permittedto receive it in simplicity and silence as becomes the sacredcommemoration. All the time she was still _preschée_ and admonishedby the men about her. A few days after her death the Bishop and hisfollowers assembled, and set down in evidence their different parts inthat scene. How far it is to be relied upon, it is difficult to say. The speakers did not testify under oath; there is no formal warrantfor their truth, and an anxious attempt to prove her change of mindis evident throughout; still there seem elements of truth in it, anda certain glimpse is afforded of Jeanne in the depths, when hope andstrength were gone. The general burden of their testimony is that shesadly allowed herself to have been deceived, as to the liberation forwhich all along she had hoped. Peter Morice, often already mentioned, importuning her on the subject of the spirits, endeavouring to get fromher an admission that she had not seen them at all, and was herselfa deceiver: or if not that, at least that they were evil spirits, notgood, --drew from her the impatient exclamation: "Be they good spirits, or be they evil, they appeared to me. " Even in the act of giving her herlast communion, Brother Martin paused with the consecrated Host in hishands. 

"Do you believe, " he said, "that this is the body of Christ?" Jeanneanswered: "Yes, and He alone can free me; I pray you to administer. "Then this brother said to Jeanne: "Do you believe as fully in yourvoices?" Jeanne answered: "I believe in God alone and not in the voices, which have deceived me. " L'Advenu himself, however, does not give thisdeposition, but another of the persons present, Le Camus, who did notlive to revise his testimony at the Rehabilitation. 

The rite being over, the Bishop himself bustled in with an air ofsatisfaction, rubbing his hands, one may suppose from his tone. "So, Jeanne, " he said, "you have always told us that your 'voices' said youwere to be delivered, and you see now they have deceived you. Tell usthe truth at last. " Then Jeanne answered: "Truly I see that they havedeceived me. " The report is Cauchon's, and therefore little to betrusted; but the sad reply is at least not unlike the sentiment that, even in records more trustworthy, seems to have breathed forth in her. The other spectators all report another portion of this conversation. "Bishop, it is by you I die, " are the words with which the Maid is saidto have met him. "Oh Jeanne, have patience, " he replied. "It is becauseyou did not keep your promise. " "If you had kept yours, and sent me tothe prison of the Church, and put me in gentle hands, it would nothave happened, " she replied. "I appeal from you to God. " Several of theattendants, also according to the Bishop's account, heard from her thesame sad words: "They have deceived me"; and there seems no reason whywe should not believe it. Her mind was weighed down under this dreadfulunaccountable fact. She was forsaken--as a greater sufferer was; and ahorror of darkness had closed around her. "Ah, Sieur Pierre, " she saidto Morice, "where shall I be to-night?" The man had condemned her as arelapsed heretic, a daughter of perdition. He had just suggested to herthat her angels must have been devils. Nevertheless perhaps his facewas not unkindly, he had not meant all the harm he did. He ought to haveanswered, "In Hell, with the spirits you have trusted"; that would havebeen the only logical response. What he did say was very different. "Have you not good faith in the Lord?" said the judge who had doomedher. Amazing and notable speech! They had sentenced her to be burned forblasphemy as an envoy of the devil; they believed in fact that she wasthe child of God, and going straight in that flame to the skies. Jeanne, with the sound, clear head and the "sane mind" to which all ofthem testified, did she perceive, even at that dreadful moment, theinconceivable contradiction? "Ah, " she said, "yes, God helping me, Ishall be in Paradise. "

There is one point in the equivocal report which commends itself to themind, which several of these men unite in, but which was carefully notrepeated at the Rehabilitation: and this was that Jeanne allowed "as ifit had been a thing of small importance, " that her story of the angelbearing the crown at Chinon was a romance which she neither expected norintended to be believed. For this we have to thank L'Oyseleur and therest of the reverend ghouls assembled on that dreadful morning in theprison. 

Jeanne was then dressed, for her last appearance in this world, in thelong white garment of penitence, the robe of sacrifice: and the mitrewas placed on her head which was worn by the victims of the Holy Office. She was led for the last time down the echoing stair to the crowdedcourtyard where her "chariot" awaited her. It was her confessor's partto remain by her side, and Frère Isambard and Massieu, the officer, both her friends, were also with her. It is said that L'Oyseleur rushedforward at this moment, either to accompany her also, or, as many say, to fling himself at her feet and implore her pardon. He was hustledaside by the crowd and would have been killed by the English, it issaid, but for Warwick. The bystanders would seem to have been seizedwith a sudden disgust for all the priests about, thinking them Jeanne'sfriends, the historians insinuate--more likely in scorn and horror oftheir treachery. And then the melancholy procession set forth. 

The streets were overflowing as was natural, crowded in every part:eight hundred English soldiers surrounded and followed the cortège, as the car rumbled along over the rough stones. Not yet had the Maidattained to the calm of consent. She looked wildly about her at all thehigh houses and windows crowded with gazers, and at the throngs thatgaped and gazed upon her on every side. In the midst of the consolationsof the confessor who poured pious words in her ears, other words, theplaints of a wondering despair fell from her lips, "Rouen! Rouen!" shesaid; "am I to die here?" It seemed incredible to her, impossible. Shelooked about still for some sign of disturbance, some rising among thecrowd, some cry of "France! France!" or glitter of mail. Nothing: butthe crowds ever gazing, murmuring at her, the soldiers roughly clearingthe way, the rude chariot rumbling on. "Rouen, Rouen! I fear that youshall yet suffer because of this, " she murmured in her distraction, amidher moanings and tears. 

At last the procession came to the Old Market, an open space encumberedwith three erections--one reaching up so high that the shadow of itseemed to touch the sky, the horrid stake with wood piled up in anenormous mass, made so high, it is said, in order that the executionerhimself might not reach it to give a merciful blow, to secureunconsciousness before the flames could touch the trembling form. Twoplatforms were raised opposite, one furnished with chairs and benchesfor Winchester and his court, another for the judges, with the civilofficers of Rouen who ought to have pronounced sentence in their turn. Without this form the execution was illegal: what did it matter? Nosentence at all was read to her, not even the ecclesiastical one whichwas illegal also. She was probably placed first on the same platformwith her judges, where there was a pulpit from which she was to be_preschée_ for the last time. Of all Jeanne's sufferings this couldscarcely be the least, that she was always _preschée_, lectured, addressed, sermonised through every painful step of her career. 

The moan was still unsilenced on her lips, and her distracted soulscarcely yet freed from the sick thought of a possible deliverance, when the everlasting strain of admonishment, and re-enumeration of hererrors, again penetrated the hum of the crowd. The preacher was NicolasMidi, one of the eloquent members of that dark fraternity; and his textwas in St. Paul's words: "If any of the members suffer, all the othermembers suffer with it. " Jeanne was a rotten branch which had to be cutoff from the Church for the good of her own soul, and that the Churchmight not suffer by her sin; a heretic, a blasphemer, an impostor, giving forth false fables at one time, and making a false penitencethe next. It is very unlikely that she heard anything of that flood ofinvective. At the end of the sermon the preacher bade her "Go in peace. "Even then, however, the fountain of abuse did not cease. The Bishophimself rose, and once more by way of exhorting her to a finalrepentance, heaped ill names upon her helpless head. The narrative showsthat the prisoner, now arrived at the last point in her career, paid noattention to the tirade levelled at her from the president's place. "She knelt down on the platform showing great signs and appearance ofcontrition, so that all those who looked upon her wept. She called onher knees upon the blessed Trinity, the blessed glorious Virgin Mary, and all the blessed saints of Paradise. " She called specially--wasit with still a return towards the hoped for miracle? was it with theinstinctive cry towards an old and faithful friend?--"St. Michael, St. Michael, St. Michael, help!" There would seem to have been a moment inwhich the hush and silence of a great crowd surrounded thiswonderful stage, where was that white figure on her knees, praying, speaking--sometimes to God, sometimes to the saintly unseen companionsof her life, sometimes in broken phrases to those about her. She askedthe priests, thronging all round, those who had churches, to say a massfor her soul. She asked all whom she might have offended to forgive her. Through her tears and prayers broke again and again the sorrowful cry of"Rouen, Rouen! Is it here truly that I must die?" No reason is given forthe special pang that seems to echo in this cry. Jeanne had once planneda campaign in Normandy with Alençon. Had there been perhaps some specialhope which made this conclusion all the more bitter, of setting up inthe Norman capital her standard and that of her King?

There have been martyrs more exalted above the circumstances of theirfate than Jeanne. She was no abstract heroine. She felt every pang tothe depth of her natural, spontaneous being, and the humiliation and thedeep distress of having been abandoned in the sight of men, perhaps theprofoundest pang of which nature is capable. "He trusted in God that hewould deliver him: let him deliver him if he will have him. " That whichher Lord had borne, the little sister had now to bear. She called uponthe saints, but they did not answer. She was shamed in the sight ofmen. But as she knelt there weeping, the Bishop's evil voice scarcelysilenced, the soldiers waiting impatient--the entire crowd, touchedto its heart with one impulse, broke into a burst of weeping andlamentation, "_à chaudes larmes_" according to the graphic Frenchexpression. They wept hot tears as in the keen personal pang of sorrowand fellow-feeling and impotence to help. Winchester--withdrawn high onhis platform, ostentatiously separated from any share in it, aspectator merely--wept; and the judges wept. The Bishop of Boulogne wasoverwhelmed with emotion, iron tears flowed down the accursed Cauchon'scheeks. The very world stood still to see that white form of purity, andvalour, and faith, the Maid, not shouting triumphant on the height ofvictory, but kneeling, weeping, on the verge of torture. Human naturecould not bear this long. A hoarse cry burst forth: "Will you keep ushere all day; must we dine here?" a voice perhaps of unendurable painthat simulated cruelty. And then the executioner stepped in and seizedthe victim. 

It has been said that her stake was set so high, that there might be nochance of a merciful blow, or of strangulation to spare the victim theatrocities of the fire; perhaps, let us hope, it was rather that theascending smoke might suffocate her before the flame could reach her:the fifteenth century would naturally accept the most cruel explanation. There was a writing set over the little platform which gave footing tothe attendants below the stake, upon which were written the followingwords:

JEANNE CALLED THE MAID, LIAR, ABUSER OF THE PEOPLE, SOOTHSAYER, BLASPHEMER OF GOD, PERNICIOUS, SUPERSTITIOUS, IDOLATROUS, CRUEL, DISSOLUTE, INVOKER OF DEVILS, APOSTATE, SCHISMATIC, HERETIC. 

This was how her countrymen in the name of law and justice and religionbranded the Maid of France--one half of her countrymen: the other half, silent, speaking no word, looking on. 

Before she began to ascend the stake, Jeanne, rising from her knees, asked for a cross. No place so fit for that emblem ever was: but nocross was to be found. One of the English soldiers who kept the wayseized a stick from some one by, broke it across his knee in unequalparts, and bound them hurriedly together; so, in the legend and in allthe pictures, when Mary of Nazareth was led to her espousals, one of herdisappointed suitors broke his wand. The cross was rough with its brokenedges which Jeanne accepted from her enemy, and carried, pressing itagainst her bosom. One would rather have that rude cross to preserve asa sacred thing, than the highest effort of art in gold and silver. Thiswas her ornament and consolation as she trod the few remaining steps andmounted the pile of the faggots to her place high over all that sea ofheads. When she was bound securely to her stake, she asked again for across, a cross blessed and sacred from a church, to be held before heras long as her eyes could see. Frère Isambard and Massieu, following herclosely still, sent to the nearest church, and procured probably somecross which was used for processional purposes on a long staff whichcould be held up before her. The friar stood upon the faggots holdingit up, and calling out broken words of encouragement so long that Jeannebade him withdraw, lest the fire should catch his robes. And so at last, as the flames began to rise, she was left alone, the good brother alwaysat the foot of the pile, painfully holding up with uplifted arms thecross that she might still see it, the soldiers crowding, lit upwith the red glow of the fire, the horrified, trembling crowd like anagitated sea around. The wild flames rose and fell in sinister gleamsand flashes, the smoke blew upwards, by times enveloping that whiteMaid standing out alone against a sky still blue and sweet withMay--Pandemonium underneath, but Heaven above. Then suddenly there camea great cry from among the black fumes that began to reach the clouds:"My voices were of God! They have not deceived me!" She had seen andrecognised it at last. Here it was, the miracle: the great victorythat had been promised--though not with clang of swords and triumph ofrescuing knights, and "St. Denis for France!"--but by the sole handof God, a victory and triumph for all time, for her country a crown ofglory and ineffable shame. 

Thus died the Maid of France--with "Jesus, Jesus, " on her lips--till themerciful smoke breathing upwards choked that voice in her throat; andone who was like unto the Son of God, who was with her in the fire, wiped all memory of the bitter cross, wavering uplifted through the airin the good monk's trembling hands--from eyes which opened bright uponthe light and peace of that Paradise of which she had so long thoughtand dreamed. 

CHAPTER XVIII -- AFTER. 

The natural burst of remorse which follows such an event is well knownin history; and is as certainly to be expected as the details of thegreat catastrophe itself. We feel almost as if, had there not been factand evidence for such a revulsion of feeling, it must have been recordedall the same, being inevitable. The executioner, perhaps the mostinnocent of all, sought out Frère Isambard, and confessed to him in ananguish of remorse fearing never to be pardoned for what he had done. An Englishman who had sworn to add a faggot to the flames in which thewitch should be burned, when he rushed forward to keep his word wasseized with sudden compunction--believed that he saw a white doveflutter forth from amid the smoke over her head, and, almost faintingat the sight, had to be led by his comrades to the nearest tavern forrefreshment, a life-like touch in which we recognise our countryman; buthe too found his way that afternoon to Frère Isambard like the other. Ahorrible story is told by the _Bourgeois de Paris_, whose contemporaryjournal is one of the authorities for this period, that "the fire wasdrawn aside" in order that Jeanne's form, with all its clothing burnedaway, should be visible by one last act of shameless insult to thecrowd. The fifteenth century believed, as we have said, everything thatis cruel and horrible, as indeed the vulgar mind does at all ages; butsuch brutal imaginings have seldom any truth to support them, and thereis no such suggestion in the actual record. Isambard and Massieu heardfrom one of the officials that when every other part of her bodywas destroyed the heart was found intact, but was, by the order ofWinchester, flung into the Seine along with all the ashes of thatsacrifice. It was wise no doubt that no relics should be kept. 

Other details were murmured abroad amid the excited talk that followedthis dreadful scene. "When she was enveloped by the smoke, she cried outfor water, holy water, and called to St. Michæl; then hung her head uponher breast and breathing forth the name of Jesus, gently died. " "Beingin the flame her voice never ceased repeating in a loud voice the holyname of Jesus, and invoking without cease the saints of paradise, shegave up her spirit, bowing her head and saying the name of Jesus insign of the fervour of her faith. " One of the Canons of Rouen, standingsobbing in the crowd, said to another: "Would that my soul were in thesame place where the soul of that woman is at this moment"; which indeedis not very different from the authorised saying of Pierre Morice inthe prison. Guillaume Manchon, the reporter, he who wrote _superbaresponsio_ on his margin, and had written down every word of her longexamination--his occupation for three months, --says that he "never weptso much for anything that happened to himself, and that for awhole month he could not recover his calm. " This man adds a verycharacteristic touch, to wit, that "with part of the pay which he hadfor the trial, he bought a missal, that he might have a reason forpraying for her. " Jean Tressat, "secretary to the King of England"(whatever that office may have been), went home from the executioncrying out, "We are all lost, for we have burned a saint. " A priest, afterwards bishop, Jean Fabry, "did not believe that there was any manwho could restrain his tears. "

The modern historians speak of the mockeries of the English, but noneare visible in the record. Indeed, the part of the English in it isextraordinarily diminished on investigation; they are the supposedinspirers of the whole proceedings; they are believed to be continuallypushing on the inquisitors; still more, they are supposed to have boughtall that large tribunal, the sixty or seventy judges, among whom werethe most learned and esteemed Doctors in France; but of none of thisis there any proof given. That they were anxious to procure Jeanne'scondemnation and death, is very certain. Not one among them believedin her sacred mission, almost all considered her a sorceress, the mostdangerous of evil influences, a witch who had brought shame and loss toEngland by her incantations and evil spells. On that point therecould be no doubt whatever. She alone had stopped the progress of theinvaders, and broken the charm of their invariable success. But all thatshe had done had been in favour of Charles, who made no attempt to serveor help her, and who had thwarted her plans, and hindered her work solong as it was possible to do so, even when she was performing miraclesfor his sake. And Alençon, Dunois, La Hire, where were they and all theknights? Two of them at least were at Louvins, within a day's march, but never made a step to rescue her. We need not ask where were thestatesmen and clergy on the French side, for they were unfeignedly gladto have the burden of condemning her taken from their hands. No onein her own country said a word or struck a blow for Jeanne. As forthe suborning of the University of Paris _en masse_, and all itsbest members in particular, that is a general baseness in which it isimpossible to believe. There is no appearance even of any particularpressure put upon the judges. Jean de la Fontaine disappeared, we aretold, and no one ever knew what became of him: but it was from Cauchonhe fled. And nothing seems to have happened to the monks who attendedthe Maid to the scaffold, nor to the others who sobbed about thepile. On the other side, the Doctors who condemned her were in no waypersecuted or troubled by the French authorities when the King came tohis own. There was at the time a universal tacit consent in France toall that was done at Rouen on the 31st of May, 1431. 

One reason for this was not far to seek. We have perhaps alreadysufficiently dwelt upon it. It was that France was not France at thatdolorous moment. It was no unanimous nation repulsing an invader. Itwas two at least, if not more countries, one of them frankly andsympathetically attaching itself to the invader, almost as nearly alliedto him in blood, and more nearly by other bonds, than any tie existingbetween France and Burgundy. This does not account for the hostileindifference of southern France and of the French monarch to Jeanne, whohad delivered them; but it accounts for the hostility of Paris andthe adjacent provinces, and Normandy. She was as much against them asagainst the English, and the national sentiment to which she, a patriotbefore her age, appealed, --bidding not only the English go home, orfight and be vanquished, which was their only alternative--butthe Burgundians to be converted and to live in peace with theirbrothers, --did not exist. Neither to Burgundians, Picards, or Normanswas the daughter of far Champagne a fellow countrywoman. There wasneither sympathy nor kindness in their hearts on that score. Some werehumane and full of pity for a simple woman in such terrible straits; butno more in Paris than in Rouen was the Maid of Orleans a native championpersecuted by the English; she was to both an enemy, a sorceress, putting their soldiers and themselves to shame. 

I have no desire to lessen our(1) guilt, whatever cruelty may havebeen practised by English hands against the Heavenly Maid. And muchwas practised--the iron cage, the chains, the brutal guards, the finalstake, for which may God and also the world, forgive a crime fully andoften confessed. But it was by French wits and French ingenuity that shewas tortured for three months and betrayed to her death. A prisoner ofwar, yet taken and tried as a criminal, the first step in her downfallwas a disgrace to two chivalrous nations; but the shame is greater uponthose who sold than upon those who bought; and greatest of all uponthose who did not move Heaven and earth, nay, did not move a finger, torescue. And indeed we have been the most penitent of all concerned; wehave shrived ourselves by open confession and tears. We have quarrelledwith our Shakespeare on account of the Maid, and do not know how wecould have forgiven him, but for the notable and delightful discoverythat it was not he after all, but another and a lesser hand thatendeavoured to befoul her shining garments. France has never quarrelledwith her Voltaire for a much fouler and more intentional blasphemy. 

The most significant and the most curious after-scene, a pendant to theremorse and pity of so many of the humbler spectators, was the assemblyheld on the Thursday after Jeanne's death, how and when we are not told. It consisted of "nos judices antedicti, " but neither is the place ofmeeting named, nor the person who presided. Its sole testimonial isthat the manuscript is in the same hand which has written the previousrecords: but whereas each page in that record was signed at the bottomby responsible notaries, Manchon and his colleagues, no name whatevercertifies this. Seven men, Doctors and persons of high importance, alljudges on the trial, all concerned in that last scene in the prison, stand up and give their report of what happened there--part of whichwe have quoted--their object being to establish that Jeanne at the lastacknowledged herself to be deceived. According to their own showing itwas exactly such an acknowledgment as our Lord might have been supposedto make in the moment of his agony when the words of the psalm, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" burst from his lips. There seemsno reason that we can see, why this evidence should not be received assubstantially true. The inference that any real recantation on Jeanne'spart was then made, is untrue, and not even asserted. She was deceivedin respect to her deliverance, and felt it to the bottom of her heart. It was to her the bitterness of death. But the flames of her burningshowed her the truth, and with her last breath she proclaimed herrenewed conviction. The scene at the stake would lose something of itsgreatness without that momentary cloud which weighed down her troubledsoul. 

Twenty years after the martyrdom of Jeanne, long after he had, accordingto her prophecy, regained Paris and all that had been lost, it became adanger to the King of France that it should be possible to imaginethat his kingdom had been recovered for him by means of sorcery; andaccordingly a great new trial was appointed to revise the decisionsof the old. In the same palace of the Archbishop at Rouen, which hadwitnessed so many scenes of the previous tragedy, the depositions ofwitnesses collected with the minutest care, and which it had taken along time to gather from all quarters, were submitted for judgment, anda full and complete reversal of the condemnation was given. The _procès_was a civil one, instituted (nominally) by the mother and brothers ofJeanne, one of the latter being now a knight, Pierre de Lys, a gentlemanof coat armour--against the heirs and representatives of Cauchon, Bishopof Beauvais, and Lemaître, the Deputy Inquisitor--with other personschiefly concerned in the judgment. Some of these men were dead, some, wisely, not to be found. The result was such a mass of testimony as putevery incident of the life of the Maid in the fullest light from herchildhood to her death, and in consequence secured a triumphant and fullacquittal of herself and her name from every reproach. This remarkableand indeed unique occurrence does not seem, however, to have rousedany enthusiasm. Perhaps France felt herself too guilty: perhaps theextraordinary calm of contemporary opinion which was still too near thecatastrophe to see it fully: perhaps that difficulty in the diffusion ofnews which hindered the common knowledge of a trial--a thing too heavyto be blown upon the winds, --while it promulgated the legend, a thingso much more light to carry: may be the cause of this. But it is anextraordinary fact that Jeanne's name remained in abeyance for manyages, and that only in this century has it come to any sort of glory, in the country of which Jeanne is the first and greatest of patriotsand champions, a country, too, to which national glory is more dear thandaily bread. 

In the new and wonderful spring of life that succeeded the revolutionof 1830, the martyr of the fifteenth century came to light as by arevelation. The episode of the Pucelle in Michelet's _History of France_touched the heart of the world, and remains one of the finest efforts ofhistory and the most popular picture of the saint. And perhaps, thoughso much less important in point of art, the maiden work of anothermaiden of Orleans--the little statue of Jeanne, so pure, so simple, sospiritual, made by the Princess Marie of that house, the daughter of therace which the Maid held in visionary love, and which thus only has everattempted any return of that devotion--had its part in reawakeningher name and memory. It fell again, however, after the great work ofQuicherat had finally given to the country the means of fullyforming its opinion on the subject which Fabre's translation, thoughunfortunately not literal and adorned with modern decorations, wascalculated to render popular. A great crop of statues and some picturesnot of any great artistic merit have since been dedicated to the memoryof the Maid: but yet the public enthusiasm has never risen above thetide mark of literary applause. 

There has been, however, a great movement of enthusiasm lately to gainfor Jeanne the honour of canonisation(2); but it seems to have failed, or at least to have sunk again for the moment into silence. Perhapsthese honours are out of date in our time. One of the most recentwriters on the subject, M. Henri Blaze de Bury, suggests that one reasonwhich retards this final consecration is "England, certainly not anegligible quantity to a Pope of our time. " Let no such illusion moveany mind, French or ecclesiastical. Canonisation means to us, I presume, and even to a great number of Catholics, simply the highest honourthat can be paid to a holy and spotless name. In that sense there isno distinction of nation, and the English as warmly as the French, bothbeing guilty towards her, and before God on her account--would welcomeall honour that could be paid to one who, more truly than any princessof the blood, is Jeanne of France, the Maid, alone in her lofty humilityand valour, and in everlasting fragrance of modesty and youth. 

 (1) The writer must add that personally, as a Scot, she has no right to use this pronoun. Scotland is entirely guiltless of this crime. The Scots were fighting on the side of France through all these wars, a little perhaps for love of France, but much more out of natural hostility to the English. Yet at this time of day, except to state that fact, it is scarcely necessary to throw off the responsibility. The English side is now our side, though it was not so in the fifteenth century: and a writer of the English tongue must naturally desire that there should at least be fair play. 

 (2) I am informed, however, that she is already "Venerable, " not a very appropriate title--the same, I presume, as Bienheureuse, which is prettier, --and may therefore be addressed by the faithful in prayer, though her rank is only, as it were, brevet rank, and her elevation incomplete.